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littp://www.archive.org/details/baldwinlecturesfOOannarich 


BALDWIN  LECTURES 

for 
1902-1903 


Delivered  at  Ann  Arbor,  Michigan 
under  the  direction  of 

THE  HARRIS  MKMORIAI,  TRUST 


i^M 

v*/"*' 


4^  X-^"  /  ^v 


Press  of 

Winn  &  Hammond 

Detax>it 


CONTENTS 


Extract  from  the  Deed  of  Trust 


Monotheism  and  the  I^ove  of  God       .  13 

Right  Rbverend  Frederick  Burgess 
Bishop  of  Long  Island 


The  Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      37 

Reverend  Chari,es  E.  Woodcock 
St.  John's  Church,  Detroit 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon      ...       65 

Reverend  Wii,i,iam  S.  Rainsford 
St.  George's  Church,  New  York 


Christianity  and  Education         ...       85 

Right  Reverend  Thomas  Frank  Gaii,or 
Bishop  of  Tennessee 

The  Realizing  of  God  .         .         .         .     loi 

Reverend  William  D.  Maxon 
Christ  Church,  Detroit 


147817 


Extract  From  the  Deed  of  Trust 

In  Accordance  with  the  Provisions  of 

WHICH  THE  Baldwin  I^ectures 

WERE  Instituted 


"This  Instrument,  made  and  executed  be- 
tween Samuel  Smith  Harris,  Bishop  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the  Diocese  of 
Michigan,  of  the  City  of  Detroit,  Wayne 
County,  Michigan,  as  party  of  the  first  part,  and 
Henry  P.  Baldwin,  Alonzo  B.  Palmer,  Henry 
A.  Hayden,  Sidney  D.  Miller,  and  Henry  P. 
Baldwin,  2d,  of  the  State  of  Michigan,  Trustees 
under  the  trust  created  by  this  instrument,  as 
parties  of  the  second  part,  witnesseth  as  follows : 

"In  the  year  of  Our  Lord  one  thousand  eight 
hundred  and  eighty-five,  the  said  party  of  the 
first  part,  moved  by  the  importance  of  bringing 
all  practicable  Christian  influences  to  bear  upon 
the  great  body  of  students  annually  assembled 
at  the  University  of  Michigan,  undertook  to 
promote  and  set  in  operation  a  plan  of  Christian 
work  at  said  University,  and  collected  contribu- 
tions for  that  purpose,  of  which  plan  the  follow- 
ing outline  is  here  given,  that  is  to  say : 

"i.  To  erect  a  building  or  hall  near  the 
University,  in  which  there  should  be  cheerful 
parlors,  a  well-equipped  reading-room,  and  a 


6  Extract  from  the  Deed  of  Trust 

lecture-room,    where    the    lectures    hereinafter 
mentioned  mi^ht  be  given; 

'*2.  To  endow  a  lectureship  similar  to  the 
Bampton  Lectureship  in  Eng^land,  for  the  estab- 
lishment and  defence  of  Christian  truth;  the 
lectures  on  such  foundation  to  be  delivered  an- 
nually at  Ann  Arbor  by  a  learned  clerg-yman  or 
other  communicant  of  the  Protestant  Eipiscopal 
Church,  to  be  chosen  as  hereinafter  provided, 
such  lectures  to  be  not  less  than  six  nor  more 
than  eight  in  number,  and  to  be  published  in 
book  form  before  the  income  of  the  fund  shall 
be  paid  to  the  lecturer; 

"3.  To  endow  two  other  lectureships,  one 
on  Biblical  Literature  and  Learning,  and  the 
other  on  Christian  Evidences,  the  object  of  such 
lectureships  to  be  to  provide  for  all  the  students 
who  may  be  willing  to  avail  themselves  of  them 
a  complete  course  of  instruction  in  sacred  learn- 
ing, and  in  the  philosophy  of  right  thinking 
and  right  living,  without  which  no  education 
can  justly  be  considered  complete ; 

"4.  To  organize  a  society,  to  be  composed 
of  the  students  in  all  classes  and  departments  of 
the  University  who  may  be  members  of  or 
attached  to  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  of 
which  society  the  Bishoo  of  the  Diocese,  the 
Rector,  Wardens,  and  Vestrymen  of  St.  An- 
drew's Parish,  and  all  the  Professors  of  the 
Universitv  who  are  communicants  of  the  Pro- 
testant Episcopal  Church  should  be  members 
ex-oiUcio,  which  society  should  have  the  care 


Extract  from  the  Deed  of  Trust  7 


and  manao^ement  of  the  reading-room  and  lec- 
ture-room of  the  hall,  and  of  all  exercises  or  em- 
ployments carried  on  therein,  and  should  more- 
over annually  elect  each  of  the  lecturers  herein- 
before mentioned,  upon  the  nomination  of  the 
Bishop  of  the  Diocese. 

**In  pursuance  of  the  said  plan,  the  said  so- 
ciety of  students  and  others  has  been  duly 
organized  under  the  name  of  the  'Hobart  Guild 
of  the  University  of  Michigan;'  the  hall  above 
mentioned  has  been  builded  and  called  'Hobart 
Hall;'  and  Mr.  Henry  P.  Baldv^in  of  Detroit, 
Michigan,  and  Sibyl  A.  Baldwin,  his  wife,  have 
given  to  the  said  party  of  the  first  part  the  sum 
of  ten  thousand  dollars  for  the  endowment  and 
support  of  the  lectureship  first  hereinbefore 
mentioned. 

''Now,  therefore,  I,  the  said  Samuel  Smith 
Harris,  Bishop  as  aforesaid,  do  hereby  give, 
grant,  and  transfer  to  the  said  Henry  P.  Bald- 
win, Alonzo  B.  Palmer,  Henrv  A.  Hayden, 
Sidney  D.  Miller,  and  Henry  P.  Baldwin,  2d, 
Trustees  as  aforesaid,  the  said  sum  of  ten  thou- 
sand dollars  to  be  invested  in  good  and  safe 
interest-bearing  securities,  the  net  income  there- 
of to  be  paid  and  applied  from  time  to  time  as 
hereinafter  provided,  the  said  sum  and  the  in- 
come thereof  to  be  held  in  trust  for  the  follow- 
ing uses : 

"i.  The  said  fund  shall  be  known  as  the  En- 
dowment Fund  of  the  Baldwin  Lectures. 

"2.     There  shall  be  chosen  annually  by  the 


8  Extract  from  the  Deed  of  Trust 

Hobart  Guild  of  the  University  of  Michigan, 
upon  the  nomination  of  the  Bishop  of  Michigan, 
a  learned  clergyman  or  other  communicant  of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  to  deliver  at 
Ann  Arbor  and  under  the  auspices  of  the  said 
Hobart  Guild,  between  the  Feast  of  St.  Michael 
and  All  Angels  and  the  Feast  of  St.  Thomas, 
m  each  year,  not  less  than  six  nor  more  than 
eig-ht  lectures,  for  the  Establishment  and  De- 
fence of  Christian  Truth ;  the  said  lectures  to  be 
published  in  book  form  by  Easter  of  the  follow- 
ing year,  and  to  be  entitled  *The  Baldwin  Lec- 
tures;' and  there  shall  be  paid  to  the  said  lec- 
turer the  income  of  the  said  endowment  fund, 
upon  the  delivery  of  fifty  copies  of  said  lectures 
to  the  said  Trustees  or  their  successors ;  the  said 
printed  volumes  to  contain,  as  an  extract  from 
this  instrument,  or  in  condensed  form,.^a  state- 
ment of  the  object  and  conditions  of  this  trust." 


In  the  month  of  July,  A.  D.  1901,  the 
Trustees  in  whose  hands  the  administration  of 
this  trust  reposed,  received  a  communication 
from  the  family  of  Governor  Baldwin  and  the 
Trustees  of  his  estate,  requesting  that,  instead 
of  the  course  of  lectures  as  prescribed,  some 
other  method  should  be  adopted  which  in  the 
discretion  of  the  Trustees  would  more  faith- 
fully carry  into  effect  the  intent  and  purpose  of 
the  donors.  This  intent,  as  stated  by  the  deed 
of  j^ift,  is  to  brin^  to  bear  ''all  practicable 
Christian  influences  upon  the  g^reat  body  of  stu- 


Extract  from  the  Deed  of  Trust  9 

dents  annually  assembled  at  the  University." 

In  this  communication  it  was  sug-g-ested  also 
that  courses  of  sermons  by  different  preachers 
should  be  tried  as  an  experimental  change.  In 
accordance  with  this  suggestion,  the  present 
course  was  arranged  and  delivered  with  marked 
success. 


EXPLANATORY 


As  shown  by  the  foregoing  pages, 
these  lecture  sermons  are  a  departure 
from  the  original  plan.  The  publication 
is  made  under  our  direction  solely. 

Trustees  of  Harris  Memorial, 
Trust 


Monotheism  and  The  Love 
of  God. 


The  generous  donor  of  this  lectureship  has 
been  equally  generous  in  the  range  of  thought 
which  he  has  given  to  the  lecturers.  Beginning, 
as  I  do  to-night,  this  year's  course,  I  find  myself 
embarrassed  by  the  very  wealth  of  topics  which 
might  be  selected.  In  the  belief,  however,  that 
man's  relation  to  God  is  the  subject  which  is  of 
supreme  interest  to  the  human  mind  and  heart, 
I  have  determined  to  take  one  phase  of  it  and 
treat  it  under  the  title  of  ''Monotheism  and  the 
Love  of  God." 

Two  things  may  be  assumed  in  an  educated 
audience  like  this — the  belief  in  God  and  the 
belief  in  the  personality  of  God.  The  man  who 
in  these  days  would  profess  himself  an  atheist 
would  certainly  be  a  bold  champion  of  a  lost 
cause.  Atheism  is  no  longer  fashionable,  to 
say  the  least.  The  man  who  adopts  it  keeps  it 
to  himself  along  with  his  other  secrets.  This 
secretiveness  has  always  been  associated  with 
the  folly  of  the  atheist.  For  even  the  fool,  as 
Lord  Bacon  reminds  us,  did  not  speak  aloud, 
but  whispered  to  himself  when  he  professed  his 
unbelief,  ''The  fool  hath  said  in  his  heart,  there 


14        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

is  no  God."     The  belief  in  the  personality  of 
God  shall  be  also  assumed,  although  this  faith 
is  by  no  means  as  common  among-  educated 
people.  In  this  respect  pantheism  is  the  opposite 
of  monotheism.     Pantheism  resolves  the  whole 
universe,  man  and  animal,  tree  and  ground, 
stars  and  planets,  into  the  One  Divine  Reality, 
the    impersonal    Substance    but    the    infinite 
Powder.     This,  it  is  asserted,  is  the  theology  of 
Buddhism,  that  is,  of  a  large  section  of  man- 
kind.   But  I  doubt  if  the  common  people  accept 
any  abstract  idea  like  that,  or  can  think  of  God 
apart  from  personal  being.     And,  in  spite  of 
the  influence  of  Spinoza,  this  idea  has  never 
found  a  really  permanent  home  in  European 
and  American  thought.    A  great  deal  w^hich  is 
called  Pantheism  is  simply  the  reaction  against 
the  heartless  theology  of  the  Deists  and  the 
"Deus  ex  machina"  idea  of  the  i8th  century 
thinkers.     But  it  is  one  thing  to  say  v^ith  the 
Theist  that  God  is  immanent  in  all  things  and 
that  all  things  live  in  Him,  and  quite  another 
to  deny  with  the  Pantheist  that  God  is  also 
transcendent  to  His  universe,  dwelling  in  the 
Eternal    Light    of    His    own    nature.      The 
theology   of   the   Pantheist   must   in   the   last 
analysis  be  fatalistic  and  unmoral,  and  Illing- 
worth  is  right  when   he  says   ''Pantheism  is 
merely  materialism  grown  sentimental,  but  no 
more  tenable  for  its  change  of  name." 

The  Hebrew  scriptures  are  one  of  the  chief 
sources  of  the  conception  of  the  unity  of  God. 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        1 5 

But  do  they  enjoin  in  the  people  monotheism 
pure  and  simple,  or  do  they  only  command 
the  people  of  Israel  to  give  their  allegiance 
only  to  Jehovah  as  the  one  God  who  is  holy 
and  strong  and  able  to  give  them  salvation? 
What,  for  instance,  is  the  meaning  of  the 
words  in  Deuteronomy  which  are  translated 
thus  by  the  revisers :  "Hear,  O'  Israel,  Jehovah 
our  God  is  one  Jehovah,  and  thou  shalt 
love  Jehovah  thy  God  with  all  thy  heart 
and  with  all  thy  soul  and  with  all  thy  might?" 
Was  it  merely  meant  to  inculcate  fidelity  to 
the  nation's  God?  The  answer  to  this  question 
shows  a  transition  period,  as  it  were,  in  Hebrew 
thought.  Undoubtedly  for  centuries  the  com- 
mon people  continued  to  regard  the  gods  of  the 
heathen  around  about  them  as  real  gods,  but 
felt  that  to  Jehovah  alone  did  they  owe  alle- 
giance. Even  in  Miriam's  song  we  can  detect 
this  acknowledgment  of  the  existence  of  other 
gods: 

"Jehovah  is  my  strength  and  song, 
And  He  is  become  my  salvation; 
This  is  my  God  and  I  will  praise  Him; 
My  father's  God  and  I  will  exalt  Him. 
Jehovah  is  a  man  of  war ; 
Jehovah  is  His  name 

Who  is  like  unto  Thee,  O  Jehovah  among  the  Gods? 
Who  is  like  Thee,  glorious  in  holiness, 
Fearful  in  praises,  doing  wonders?" 

It  is  not  that  Miriam  does  not  claim  pre- 
eminence for  Jehovah,  but  she  does  not  here 
at  any  rate  assert  that  He  alone  is  God.     This 


1 6        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

was  a  song  of  triumph,  but  whenever  Israel 
was  defeated  there  was  always  the  danger  of 
apostasy.  To  the  majority  of  the  people  Baal 
and  Ashtaroth  existed,  but  they  were  not  to 
be  trusted  or  worshiped.  But  over  and  over 
again  the  people  fell  back  into  the  ignoble 
servitude.  Even  Solomon,  who  built  the  Tem- 
ple and  uttered  its  most  touching  dedication 
prayer,  Solomon,  the  wise  and  the  wealthy, 
combined  a  discreet  attention  to  the  gods  of 
Moab  and  Egypt  with  his  duties  to  Jehovah. 
It  does  not  seem  possible  to  us,  as  we  hear  him 
pray  there  for  all  his  people  and  for  the  nations 
round  about,  closing  each  petition  with  the  re- 
frain, "Hear  Thou  in  Heaven  thy  dwelling 
place,  and  when  Thou  hearest  forgive,"  that  he 
could  have  been  an  idolator.  But  the  chronicler 
tells  us  plainly  of  the  apostasy.  "Solomon,"  he 
says,  "did  what  was  right  in  the  sight  of  the 
Lord;  only  he  worshiped  upon  high  places," 
which  means,  only  he  kept  up  the  devotion  to 
the  heathen  gods. 

But  it  is  the  glory  of  the  Hebrew  nation 
that  its  greatest  men  and  thinkers  were  be- 
lievers in  the  One  Only  God,  the  maker  of 
heaven  and  earth.  And  in  the  end  they  brought 
the  whole  nation  to  their  faith.  Moses,  Elijah, 
Isaiah—what  other  names  do  we  need  to  impress 
us  with  this  truth?  One  passage  in  the  life  of 
Elijah  is  only  an  illustration  of  how  the  great 
men  in  Israel  regarded  the  heathen  deities.  As 
he  listened  to  the  false  prophets  leaping  on  their 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        ly 

altars  and  crying,  "O  Baal  hear  us/'  how  he 
turned  on  them  with  the  biting  irony,  ''Cry 
aloud,  for  he  is  a  god,  either  he  is  musing,  or 
he  is  gone,  or  he  is  on  a  journey,  or  perad- 
venture  he  sleepeth  and  must  be  awakened." 
Could  we  have  a  better  example  of  the  con- 
tempt of  the  true  Hebrew  mind  for  anything 
like  polytheism  or  idolatry?  Sometimes,  as 
in  Leviticus,  the  gods  of  the  heathen  are  called, 
with  a  play  upon  the  word,  Eleelim  rather  than 
Elohim,  that  is  nothings  rather  than  God.  St. 
Paul,  it  would  seem,  must  have  referred  to 
this  when  in  writing  to  the  Corinthians  he 
stated  what  had  become  an  axiom  in  Hebrew 
and  Christian  theology.  "We  know  that  an 
idol  is  nothing  in  the  world  and  that  there  is 
none  other  God  but  one.'' 

It  is  an  impressive  thing  to  notice  how  every 
advance  in  modern  knowledge  has  tended  to 
confirm  this  faith  of  the  Hebrews — that  there 
is  One  Only  God,  the  Creator  of  heaven  and 
earth.  Professor  Drummond  says  that  it  is  a 
remarkable  thing  that  "Atheism,  after  trailing 
its  black  length  for  centuries  across  European 
thought,  has  had  its  doom  pronounced  by 
science."  Atheism  and  polytheism  are  alike 
impossible  for  one  who  has  been  brought  up 
in  modern  schools.  The  uniformity  of  nature 
is  one  of  the  first  articles  of  the  scientific  creed. 
The  heavens  have  been  studied  until  men  see 
one  increasing  purpose.  This  world  has  been 
analysed  until  men   no  longer   for  a  moment 


i8        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

question  that  it  exists  on  one  uniform  plan. 
To  the  log-ical  mind  there  is  no  escape  from 
the  necessary  step  from  the  uniformity  of  na- 
ture to  the  unity  of  God.  Anything  else,  to 
borrow  the  fig-ure  of  a  modern  writer,*  would 
be  as  absurd  as  to  suppose  that  because  you 
threw  up  into  the  air  a  sufficient  amount  of  type 
it  would  therefore  come  down  and  arrange 
itself  on  the  floor  in  the  order  of  Shakespeare's 
Hamlet.  Such  a  combination  is,  of  course,  one 
of  the  chances.  A  sufficient  number  of  letters 
and  you  have  the  hope,  if  you  choose  to  call  it 
so,  that  the  play  will  form  itself  at  random 
from  this  sowing-  of  type.  But  what  sane  man 
would  believe  it,  or  would  not  question  the 
fraud  if  the  experiment  were  tried  successfully? 
This  is  what  modern  science  has  done  for  us. 
It  has  shown  us  the  Book  of  Nature.  It  is  one 
book,  bound  and  arranged  in  order,  and  Science 
would,  I  think,  be  ready  to  write  down  the 
name  of  the  author,  God.  *'The  Lord  our  God 
is  one  God." 

But  physical  science  while  witnessing-  to  this 
g-reat  truth  gives  only  a  partial  answer  to  the 
soul's  questionings.  It  is  as  if  I  hold  in  my 
hand  a  copy  of  Tennyson's  "In  Memoriani" 
and  ask  one  of  you  how  it  came  to  exist.  "I 
know,"  he  says,  "all  about  it.  It  was  published 
by  such  and  such  a  firm.  I  have  worked  with 
them  for  years.  I  know  their  method  of  print- 
ing- and  lithography.  I  can  take  you  to  their 
works  and   show   you  the  process,   point  out 

*See  Ward's  "Naturalism  and  Agnosticism,"  Vol.  2,  page  59. 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        19 

to  you  how  deftly  the  men  handle  the  type  and 
put  the  book  tog-ether."  That  answer  might  be 
satisfactory  to  some  people,  but  perhaps  it  does 
not  satisfy  you,  and  you  turn  to  me  with  the 
same  question  and  ask  me  how  the  book  came 
to  exist.  ''Ah,"  I  say,  "I  know.  There  were 
two  boys  brought  up  together  in  England. 
They  had  strong  intellects,  similar  tastes, 
natural  refinement  and  pure  hearts.  Between 
them  there  grew  up  a  friendship  of  whose 
intensity  neither  was  ashamed.  They  had  the 
capacity  for  affection.  After  leaving  the  uni- 
versity one  of  them  went  for  a  journey  on  the 
Continent,  and  at  Vienna  almost  without  a 
moment's  warning  died  in  that  foreign  land. 
For  a  while  upon  the  soul  of  the  one  who  was 
left  there  descended  a  profound  gloom  as  he 
waited  in  England  for  the  "fair  ship  from  the 
Italian  shore,"  which  was  bringing  back  his 
friend's  body,  and  envied 

"The  deep  calm  in  that  noble  breast 
Which  heaves  but  with  the  heaving  deep." 

But  through  all  his  sorrow  he  kept  his  faith 
in  that  future  which  Christianity  stands  for, 
and  this  poem  is  the  result  of  all  his  musings. 
Sometimes  in  the  music  the  note  of  faith  seems 
low,  but  always  it  is  there ;  and  the  whole 
poem,  disjointed  though  it  seems  at  first,  is 
bound  together  with  the  golden  cord  of  love. 

These  are  the  two  explanations  of  the  book, 
and  both  are  right.  The  one  is  the  answer  of 
science,   and  the  other    of    relig-ion.     Science 


20        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

takes  you  into  the  workshop,  shows  you,  or 
tries  to  show  you,  how  the  world  was  made, 
how  it  was  evolved  through  the  aeons  of  time 
into  the  mysterious  ^lobe  of  beauty  which  we 
know.  It  is  at  best,  however,  only  the  printer's 
knowledge  of  the  book.  But  Christianity 
studies  the  same  book  within  and  learns  there 
not  only  the  unity  of  God,  but  His  love  for 
mankind.  The  one  is  the  answer  of  Science, 
the  other  of  the  Bible.  Charles  Darwin  shows 
you  man  beings  formed  slowly  through  the  ages 
by  the  so-called  natural  selection  and  sexual 
selection.  The  writer  of  the  book  of  Genesis, 
in  a  passage  of  the  truest  poetry,  gives  us  man's 
origin  in  God.  "And  God  made  man  in  His 
image.  And  God  breathed  into  him  the  breath 
of  life  and  man  became  a  living  soul."  Both 
these  answers  may  be  true;  they  are  by  no 
means  incompatible.  I  leave  you  to  say  which 
is  the  more  valuable. 

One  fact,  however,  will  determine  our  an- 
swer. The  love  of  God  has  no  place  in  modern 
science.  It  is  quite  ready  to  put  the  illumined 
golden  text  on  the  walls  of  its  school  house : 
"The  Lord  thy  God  is  one  God,"  for  the  unity 
of  God  is  regarded  as  established.  But  the 
words  "God  is  love"  or  "Thou  shalt  love  the 
Lord  thy  God"  would  have  no  place  in  its  lec- 
ture rooms.  Like  the  book  fanciers  who  get  the 
first  edition  of  the  classics,  and  when  they  get 
them  put  them  on  their  shelves  and  ask  their 
friends  to  admire  the  outside,  but  on  no  account 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        21 

to  cut  the  leaves,  so  they  acknowledge  the  unity 
of  the  book  and  the  authorship,  but  have  no 
knowledge  of  the  author's  heart.  But  religion 
cuts  the  leaves  and  reads  the  glowing  verses, 
reads  until  it  finds  in  the  author's  words  the 
reflection  of  His  own  nature.  Science  is  always 
tracing  things  from  below.  It  wants  us  to 
believe  that  conscience  comes  from  the  dog's 
whine,  or  love  from  the  tigress'  snarl.  But 
religion  traces  man's  love  and  faith  from  God. 
"Do  not  err,"  it  says,  "every  good  gift  and 
every  perfect  gift  is  from  above  and  cometh 
down  from  the  Father  of  Lights,  in  whom  is 
no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning." 

Now  these  two  principles  have  been  strug- 
gling against  each  other  through  all  the 
centuries.  To  tell  their  history  would  be  to 
relate  the  history  of  mankind.  But  one  thing 
monotheism  establishes  is  the  solidarity  of  the 
human  race.  It  follows  as  a  corollary  from 
the  unity  of  God.  When  Greek  philosophy 
had  arrived  at  this  great  conviction  of  mono- 
theism then  the  Roman  Empire,  with  its  great 
conception  of  the  nationalization  of  all  races 
of  men,  was  capable  of  partial  realization.  And 
when  monotheism  had  become  an  axiom  of 
Hebrew  thought,  then  the  Christ  came  to 
teach  the  world  that  all  men  stand  in  the  same 
relation  to  God-  But  this  great  truth  has  had 
only  a  slow  progress  towards  recognition.  The 
Church  herself  has  oftentimes  denied  it  in  her 
history.     Heretics,  for  instance,  have  been  re- 


22        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

jq^arded  as  inferior  beings  only  worthy  of  death. 
The  o^reat  St.  Bernard,  whose  name  has  become 
a  synonym  for  true  hospitality,  nevertheless 
preached  a  crusade  when  he  promised  to  those 
who  should  slay  an  unbeliever  happiness  in  this 
life  and  Paradise  in  the  next.  And  when  the 
crusaders  took  Jerusalem,  atrocities  we  are  told 
worse  than  anything  that  can  be  conceived  took 
place,  and  70,000  were  butchered,  while  the 
pope's  legate  took  part  in  the  triumph.  At  the 
massacre  of  Beziers  the  army  of  Montford  was 
guided  by  the  Abbot  of  Citeaux.  When  the 
town  was  taken  the  difficulty  was  to  distinguish 
the  heretics  from  the  orthodox.  "Slay  them 
all,"  cried  the  Abbot,  ''the  Lord  will  know  His 
own."     Twenty  thousand  were  slain. 

This  same  struggle  is  going  on  at  the  pre- 
sent time.  Lookmg  at  the  human  race  as 
created  by  the  "survival  of  the  fittest,"  men 
are  too  apt  tO'  speak  of  inferior  races  and  to 
regard  them  as  doomed  for  destruction.  "The 
only  good  Indian  is  a  dead  Indian"  has  passed 
into  a  proverb.  The  white  race  is  often  unwill- 
ing to  do  justice  to  the  black  race.  "These 
negroes  must  go  down,"  is  the  unspoken  creed 
of  many  men.  To  the  consciences  of  many  in 
our  ow^n  country  there  has  sprung  up  a  new 
standard  of  morals.  Right  and  wrong  are 
judged  by  something  which  we  call  Anglo- 
American  alliance,  and  many  statesmen  read 
with  equanimity  of  the  slaughter  of  thousands 
of  natives  in  China    or    Africa,  with    Catling 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        23 

^uns  and  Mauser  bullets,  whereas  anything  like 
an  Indian  mutiny  or  the  cruel  killing-  of  a  white 
man's  representative,  is  looked  at  as  murder. 
It  is  perfectly  possible  for  a  nation's  heart  to 
become  as  hard  as  a  nether  grindstone  if  the 
prevalent  scientific  account  of  the  origin  of  man 
becomes  the  nation's  creed.  A  great  European 
emperor  can  talk  about  carrying  the  gospel  at 
the  point  of  the  sword,  and  some  men  no  doubt 
secretly  applaud  such  a  sentiment  as  the  best 
and  quickest  way  of  evangelizing  the  world. 

But  another  view  is  also  present  in  our 
country,  and  we  can  thank  God  for  it.  When 
the  Emperor  William  I.  of  Germany  spoke  at 
his  coronation  at  Versailles  of  "Unser  Gott," 
the  keen  French  critic  in  bitter  satire  asked, 
"When  did  God  proclaim  Himself  to  be  the 
exclusive  property  of  the  German  nation?" 
That  question  is  in  the  hearts  of  many  of  us 
at  the  present  time,  and  we  can  see  that  the 
American  nation  is  strug"gling  against  this 
lower  selfish  creed.  She  has  delivered  Cuba, 
for  instance,  out  of  bondage,  and  now  she  is 
trying  to  be  fair  in  her  trade.  Her  best  and 
wisest  ministers  will  also  seek  to  do  justice  to 
the  Philippines  and  to  abolish  the  tortures  and 
cruelty  which  should  belong  to  a  past  age. 

It  is  here  that  a  nation's  faith  becomes  of 
supreme  importance.  This  higher  ideal  can 
only  be  realized  when  we  believe  in  the  truth 
which  science  can  not  reveal  that  mankind  has 
one  origin  and  that  God  loves  not  one  nation 


24        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

but  the  whole  race.  This  great  Epiphany  truth 
has  never  been  shaken  by  science,  but  on  the 
other  hand  we  must  not  look  for  its  corrobora- 
tion at  scientific  hands.  It  belongs  to  that 
sphere  of  thought  which  we  call  the  moral  rea- 
son. Without  it  a  nation  must  become  cold  and 
hard,  incapable  of  the  tenderer  and  higher 
conceptions.  Without  it  the  higher  missionary 
spirit  must  vanish,  which  creates  in  us  the 
longing  to  carry  our  own  blessings  of  free 
government  and  universal  education  through 
the  world.  Jowett  tells  of  Geronimo,  who, 
having  heard  that  the  aborigines  of  Australia 
were  the  lowest  type  of  savages  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,  went  voluntarily  and  labored  among 
them  for  twenty  years  without  making  a  con- 
vert, and  then  added,  "I  should  like  to  havt 
been  that  man."  That  breathes  the  spirit  of  the 
missionary.  This  lowest  savage,  who  by  the 
way  shows  close  relationship  to  the  Caucasian, 
is  our  brother  by  virtue  of  our  common  origin. 
God's  love  extends  to  him  in  his  hut  in  the 
forest  and  ours  must  do  the  same.  There  is 
nothing  more  marvellous  than  this  missionary 
spirit,  and  it  depends  for  its  fire  on  this  relig- 
ious faith,  which  comes  not  by  the  will  of  man, 
but  of  God. 

But  not  only  will  the  intercourse  of  nations 
be  exalted  by  this  highest  conception  of  God, 
but  our  own  lives  with  one  another  will  be 
expanded  in  the  same  way.  It  is  here  that  our 
Christianity  shows    itself    in    the    truest  light. 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        25 

Antiquity  had  little  thought  of  duty  to  men 
being-  based  on  duty  to  God.  "Jesus,"  says  a 
modern  writer,  "is  the  only  Teacher  who  has 
not  only  insisted  on  universal  love,  but  has 
based  it  on  the  conception  of  the  love  of  God : 
'That  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your  Father 
which  is  in  heaven.'  "  How  long  men  have  been 
in  grasping  this  truth!  In  Greece  and  Rome, 
civilized  as  they  were,  a  man  might  cheat 
another  any  day,  might  plan  murders,  adul- 
teries, crimes  of  every  kind,  and  still,  if  he 
kept  the  ritual  law,  if  he  made  his  sacrifices 
regularly,  he  would  be  regarded  as  a  religious 
man.  It  was  against  such  a  view  as  this  that 
Christ  was  constantly  contending  in  His  con- 
troversies with  the  Pharisees.  They  looked  at 
sin  as  outward.  When  the  young  man  who 
owed  his  duty  to  his  aged  parents  came  and  pre- 
sented the  small  percentage  of  such  a  debt, 
which  the  priests  called  "Korban,"  to  the  Tem- 
ple, then  he  was  absolved  from  all  obligations. 
It  was  no  matter  to  them  that  the  father  or  the 
mother  would  be  listening  with  the  pathos  of 
old  age  for  the  elastic  tread  of  youth,  and  yearn- 
ing for  the  comfort  and  strength  he  would  im- 
part. The  Korban  had  been  paid.  Which  is 
the  great  commandment,  a  rabbi  was  asked 
one  day.  "The  commandment  of  tassels"  was 
his  answer,  and  then  he  told  how  much  he 
esteemed  this  law,  so  that  if  ascending  a  ladder 
or  a  stair  he  tread  on  a  tassel  and  broke  it,  he 
would  not  move  until    it    had    been    mended. 


26        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

This  same  frivolous  character  was  no  doubt  in 
their  question  when  they  asked  the  Master 
''Which  is  the  ^reat  commandment  of  the 
law?"  and  He  replied,  ''The  Lord  thy  God  is 
one  God.  And  thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy 
God."  Duty  was  to  be  founded  on  God.  That 
was  the  first  and  ^reat  commandment.  It  lifts 
all  life  into  a  higher  plane,  this  glorious  con- 
ception of  our  relation  to  God.  Prof.  Royce 
once  asked  a  graduate  who  had  been  out  of 
college  a  few  years,  and  was  very  successful  in 
his  business,  what  was  his  view  of  a  good  and 
successful  life.  He  replied:  "My  notion  of 
a  good  life  is  that  you  ought  to  help  your 
friends  and  whack  your  enemies."  Ah!  how 
far  that  answer  is  from  the  spirit  of  Jesus. 
"Love  your  enemies,  bless  them  that  curse  you, 
do  good  to  them  that  hate  you  and  pray  for 
them  that  despitefully  use  you  and  persecute 
you,  that  ye  may  be  the  children  of  your 
Father."  The  world's  best  rule  is  not  to  do  for 
others  what  they  would  not  do  for  you;  but 
Jesus  puts  it  "Whatsoever  ye  would  that  men 
should  do  unto  you,  even  so  do  unto  them,  for 
this  is  the  law  and  the  prophets." 

How  great  becomes  Jesus'  ideal  as  we  read 
it  thus.  It  is  in  one  sense  a  reversal  of  nature's 
law.  It  is  reading  something  into  the  world 
besides  physical  evolution.  There  is  little  doubt 
that  progress  in  the  world  has  been  made  by 
the  law  of  natural  selection.  The  breed  of  the 
tiger  is  improved  by  the  struggle  he  carries  on 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        27 

for  existence.  The  polar  bear  is  white  only 
because  white  ones  are  fitted  to  escape  the 
enemy,  and  a  long  process  of  selection  has 
determined  the  color.  Man  can  in  many  cases 
improve  the  breed  of  his  animals,  his  horse  or 
dog,  by  process  of  elimination  and  by  assisting- 
the  fittest  to  survive.  But  when  we  reach  man 
something  seems  to  arrest  this  law.  The 
Spartan  mother,  for  instance,  is  not  a  great  suc- 
cess as  a  mother.  We  can  not  think  that  the 
human  race  would  be  improved  if  any  learned 
committee  of  scientists  went  through  the  schools 
of  America,  for  instance,  and  chloroformed 
those  boys  and  girls  who  seemed  least  likely  to 
become  good  citizens.  Now,  why  is  this?  Be- 
cause man  is  a  being  with  a  conscience,  i.e.,  with 
the  voice  of  God  speaking  to  liim-  There  is 
something  more  than  the  physical  to  take  into 
account.  We  have  little  idea  what  would 
become  of  the  human  race  if  we  should  thus 
carry  out  this  wholesale  law  in  our  struggle 
after  perfection.  Mr.  Huxley,  in  one  of  those 
great  moments  of  his  when  he  rose  above  his 
theory  in  his  craving  for  the  truth,  said,  in  his 
Romanes  lectures:  ''The  ethical  process  is  in 
oppositon  to  the  cosmic  process,  and  tends  to 
the  suppression  of  the  qualities  best  fitted  for 
success  in  the  struggle  for  existence.  In  place 
of  ruthless  self-assertion  morality  demands  self- 
restraint  ;  in  place  of  thrusting  aside  or  treading 
down  all  competition  it  requires  that  the 
individual   shall   not  merely   respect,  but   shall 


2S        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

help  his  fellows.  Its  influence  is  directed  not 
so  much  to  the  survival  of  the  fittest  as  to  the 
fitting  of  as  many  as  possible  to  survive.  It 
repudiates  the  gladiatorial  theory  of  existence." 
That  is  true  only  because  man  is  not  only  a 
Beings  formed  through  the  ages  by  physical 
laws,  but  because  what  the  writer  of  the  Book 
of  Genesis  tells  us  is  also  true,  that  God  breathed 
into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life.  If  the  evolu- 
tionary theory  could  account  in  any  reasonable 
way  for  conscience,  then  my  contention  would 
be  at  an  end,  for  conscience  is  the  living  witness 
to  the  great  truth  which  Jesus  proclaims,  that 
men  came  not  from  below  but  from  above. 
Conscience  recognizes  that  fact  and  gives  its 
great  tribute  to  the  Bible  History.  Primitive 
man  is  not  to  be  sought  for  among  the  outcasts 
of  civilization;  we  must  not  go  to  the  lowest 
savages,  to  the  aborigines  of  Australia,  for  our 
knowledge  of  his  life  and  habits  or  his  marriage 
customs.  It  was  not  thus  that  Jesus  taught  us 
to  begin  the  study  of  anthropology.  When,  for 
instance,  the  Pharisees  came  and  asked  Him 
about  divorce  and  told  Him  that  Moses  per- 
mitted a  man  to  give  his  wife  a  bill  of  divorce- 
ment and  put  her  away,  His  answer  took  us 
back  to  primitive  society :  "Moses  suffered  this 
for  the  hardness  of  your  heart,  but  from  the 
beginning  God  made  them  male  and  female." 
Or,  as  it  is  repeated  in  St.  Matthew,  "but  from 
the  beginning  it  was  not  so."  Here  is  an  appeal 
to  the  original  purity  of  mankind;  that  purity 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        29 

which  the  conscience  of  man  witnesses  to  in. 
all  the  experiences  of  life.  If  we  could  peer 
throuo^h  the  ^s^ates  of  history,  which  shut  us  out 
of  this  primitive  world,  I  think  we  should  find 
that  the  animal  who  was  breathed  into  man- 
hood by  God  was  a  noble  and  majestic  creature. 
Conscience  gave  to  him  his  knowledge  of  God. 
He  walked  with  God  at  morning  and  eventide. 
He  felt  the  Divine  Presence,  and  when  at  last 
he  broke  the  Divine  law  he  felt  the  expulsion 
from  that  Presence.  Such  is  the  picture  the 
Bible  gives  us,  and  we  ought  not  to  be  hunting 
among  Esquimaux  or  Zulus  or  Hottentots,  or 
the  cannibals  of  the  Sandwich  Islands,  for  our 
idea  of  what  man  was  in  his  primal  age. 

But  the  gospel  of  monotheism  and  the  Love 
of  God  teaches  us  not  only  the  solidarity  of 
mankind,  but  it  tells  us  of  man's  destiny.  It 
is  a  significant  fact  that  the  belief  in  man's 
immortality  comes  strongly  to  the  front  only 
under  the  influence  of  theism.  When  the  Greek 
thinkers  had  shaken  themselves  free  from  poly- 
theism and  mythology,  then  men  like  Socrates- 
could  arise  in  Athens.  As  we  see  him  drink 
the  hemlock  in  his  prison  and  turn  to  sleep  like 
a  little  child,  we  know  that  it  is  theistic  faith 
which  has  strengthened  him.  So  long  as  men- 
believe  only  in  polytheism  they  grant  immor- 
tality of  a  certain  kind  to  a  few  of  their  heroes 
or  their  distinguished  people,  but  anything  like 
a  faith  in  the  immortality  of  man  as  man  does 
not  enter  their  minds. 


30        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

This  is  illustrated  in  Hebrew  history.  So 
long-  as  theism  had  not  taken  possession  of  the 
people's  hearts  and  they  believed  only  in  the 
tribal  God,  the  intimations  of  immortality  are 
few.  It  is  rarely  that  we  can  find  passages 
which  teach  it  explicitly,  although  in  many  parts 
of  the  Old  Testament  we  find  implicit  intimation 
of  the  writer's  faith.  Moses,  for  instance,  can 
be  quoted  by  our  Lord  when  confronting  the 
Sadducees:  "For  that  the  dead  rise."  He  said 
**even  Moses  showed  at  the  bush  when  he  called 
the  Lord  the  God  of  Abraham  and  the  God  of 
Isaac  and  the  God  of  Jacob.  For  He  is  not  a 
God  of  the  dead  but  of  the  living-,  for  all  live 
unto  Him."  That  this  was  a  right  inference 
and  that  it  put  the  teaching  of  the  Pentateuch 
on  the  subject  of  the  future  life  in  a  way  which 
they  had  never  seen  before,  is  shown  by  what 
is  added.  "And  certain  of  the  scribes  answering 
said,  Master,  Thou  hast  well  said."  These  men 
who  had  been  studying  those  scriptures  all  their 
lives  saw  a  flash  of  light  then,  and  they  could 
not  restrain  their  admiration. 

But  the  common  people  among  the  Hebrews 
up  to  the  time  of  the  captivity  had  little  concep- 
tion of  personal  immortality  ?  Their  one  idea  is 
the  continuance  of  the  national  existence.  For 
that  they  are  willing  to  sacrifice  themselves,  for 
that  they  will  fight  and  suffer  poverty  or  exile. 
That  Abraham  might  become  a  great  people 
was  the  patriarch's  desire;  that  his  progeny 
should  be  as  the  stars  of  Heaven  and  as  the 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        31 

sands  on  the  seashore  innumetable,  was  his 
prayer,  and  his  descendants  took  that  same  ideal 
as  their  own.  The  individual  mi^ht  perish,  but 
Jehovah,  their  God,  Jehovah  the  man  of  war, 
would  protect  and  strengthen  the  national  exist- 
ence. This  national  aim  took  the  place  of  any 
personal  aspiration  for  immortality.  It  made 
a  very  hig-h  g-rade  of  morality  possible.  Men 
could  sacrifice  themselves  and  their  families, 
their  money,  their  houses  and  their  lands  that 
Jehovah  might  save  the  people.  It  is  this  which 
accounts  for  the  Israelite's  peculiar  attachment 
to  Jerusalem,  as  the  city  to  which  his  nation's 
destiny  was  mysteriously  bound.  His  poets 
cannot  sing  the  songs  of  Zion  in  captivity,  and, 
when  they  go  out  of  her  gates,  it  is  with  the 
sorrow  of  those  who  sow  in  tears,  but,  when 
they  return  to  her,  it  is  the  joy  of  the  harvest. 
"He  that  now  goeth  on  his  way  weeping  shall 
doubtless  come  again  with  joy  and  bring  his 
sheaves  with  him." 

But  after  the  captivity,  when  monotheism 
pure  and  simple  had  taken  possession  of  the 
popular  mind,  then  we  find  the  infinite  value  of 
the  individual  has  become  an  article  in  the 
national  creed.  The  people  returned  from 
Babylon  a  new  people.  The  national  ideal  is 
still  there,  but  the  individual  is  responsible  now 
not  only  for  the  part  he  plays  in  protecting  the 
national  honor  and  existence,  but  for  his  own 
destiny  here  and  hereafter.  It  seems  as  if  this 
new  faith  is  somehow  closely  connected  with 


32        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

the   triumph    of   theism    over    every    form    of 
idolatry. 

And  here,  too,  we  find  that  natural  science 
has  no  insight  into  this  faith.  I  should  wish 
to  speak  with  all  respect  of  the  investigations 
of  scientific  observers  into  psycholo,2^ical  phe- 
nomena, of  their  research  in  the  domains  of 
spirit  rapping^s  and  slate  writing  and  all  the 
various  superstitions  and  frauds  of  the  past  and 
present  time,  but  the  best  result  of  their  under- 
takings has  little  value  from  a  relig^ious  point 
of  view.  Prof.  Shaler  says  :  "A  number  of  men 
of  no  mean  authority  as  naturalists,  some  of 
them  well  trained  in  experimental  science,  have 
after  long  and  apparently  careful  inquiry  become 
convinced  that  there  is  evidence  of  the  survival 
of  some  minds  after  death."!  That  is  the  best 
we  can  get  from  science,  and  the  general 
impression,  I  believe,  among  even  these  investi- 
gators is  that  these  surviving  minds  are  weak 
and  that  their  mental  existence  is  not  worth 
having.  It  only  shows  to  us  that  we  have  gone 
to  the  wrong  school  to  learn  about  immortality. 
Physical  science  has  no  message  Tt  can  not 
corroborate  the  witness  of  faith,  because  it  has 
no  power  to  read  the  inside  of  the  book.  Ac- 
cording as  science  is  either  reverent  or  flippant 
before  this  great  problem  of  destiny,  she  will 
have  either  the  pathos  of  a  blind  Milton  holding 
a  copy  o-f  Vergil  which  he  cannot  read,  or  the 
grotesqueness  of  an  ape  grasping  a  book  he 
cannot  understand. 

t  "The  Individval"  p.  305. 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God        33 

It  is  the  same  lesson  once  more.  We  must 
look  to  the  moral  reason  for  our  confirmation 
of  the  deepest  faith  of  our  lives.  It  is  in  Jesus' 
revelation  of  the  love  of  God  that  we  find  the 
solution.  Thus  theism  becomes  the  basis  of 
our  faith.  The  personal  Creator  has  certain 
moral  obligations  to  His  creatures.  The  uni- 
verse shall  be  founded  on  the  principles  of 
justice  and  of  love.  "It  is  He  that  hath  made 
us  and  not  we  ourselves."  We  have  a  right 
to  demand  that  this  world  shall  not  be  a  mockery 
of  justice  or  give  the  lie  to  our  truest  hopes. 
We  have  a  right  to  expect  that  God  shall  not 
have  made  us  in  His  image  to  dash  us  in  pieces 
at  last.  He  shall  not  have  created  in  us  the 
hunger  and  the  thirst  after  righteousness  and 
not  satisfy  us.  He  shall  not  have  planted  in  our 
hearts  a  love  which  seems  to  be  immortal  in  its 
power  and  in  its  pain,  and  then  blot  us  out  for- 
ever. This  is  the  true  theistic  position  in  regard 
to  the  expectation  of  death.  Prof.  Fraser,  in 
speaking  of  what  he  calls  the  final  venture  of 
theistic  faith,  says :  *'To  those  whose  lives  are 
habitually  directed  in  theistic  trust  towards  the 
realization  of  their  true  spiritual  ideal,  physical 
death  is  not  a  leap  in  the  dark,  but  rather  in  the 
divine  light  which  illuminates  all  present  exper- 
ience. In  the  divine  universe  of  theistic  faith, 
man  can  make  his  exit  from  the  body  in  the 
assurance  that  it  is  well ;  yet,  like  the  patriarch, 
"not  knowing  whither  he  is  going."  Equally 
beautiful  is  the  expression  of  a  modern  poet: 


34        Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God 

"We  know  not  whence  is  life,  nor  whither  death, 
Know  not  the  power  which  circumscribes  our  breath ; 
But  yet  we  do  not  fear;  What  made  us  men, 
What  gave  us  love,  shall  we  not  trust  again?" 

This  argument  seems,  perhaps,  utterly  value- 
less to  the  one  who  will  not  look  outside  physical 
science.  But  it  is  of  overwhelming  force  to 
those  who  have  accepted  Jesus'  faith  in  the  love 
of  God.  There  is  no  philosophy  which  can 
prove,  for  instance,  the  truth  of  Jesus'  parable 
of  the  Lost  Son,  but  the  moment  you  have 
become  convinced  that  that  picture  of  the  Father 
which  it  contains  is  the  picture  of  the  One  Only 
God,  then  this  higher  view  of  the  world  as 
founded  on  truth  and  justice  and  love  follows 
as  a  necessary  conclusion. 

This  is  the  message  which  I  want  to  leave 
in  your  minds.  The  best  things  in  life  are  not 
known  to  science.  It  has  been  no  part  of  my 
object  to  belittle  scientific  pursuits,  but  rather 
to  show  the  separate  functions  of  science  and 
faith.  The  blessings  which  have  come  to  man- 
kind fiom  studies  in  physics  have  been  great 
and  lasting.  All  that  is  proved  by  physical 
science  the  Church  must  gladly  accept.  Some- 
times, as  in  the  case  of  Galileo  and  the  Coperni- 
can  astronomy,  the  discoveries  of  science  will 
require  a  certain  readjustment  of  our  Christian 
philosophy.  But  in  the  end  ever>  discovery  will 
only  lead  to  higher  Christian  concepts.  In  the 
same  way  evolutionary  ideas  may  seem  revolu- 
tionary to  popular  conceptions  of  the  Book  of 
Genesis.     But  when  we  have  recovered  from 


Monotheism  and  the  Love  of  God         35 

our  surprise  we  shall  always  find  that  science 
has  not  really  touched  the  religious  question  at 
all.  The  truest  thinkers  will  tell  us  that  the 
g"reat  religious  problems  remain  the  same  as 
ever,  and  that  for  those  whose  faith  in  the 
omnipotence  and  love  of  God  is  strong,  the 
Book  of  Genesis  tells  exactly  the  same  marvel- 
lous story,  even  when  we  have  ceased  to  accept 
its  literal  meaning.  The  loss  of  the  old 
Ptolomaic  fancies  about  a  flat  earth  and  a  blue 
firmament,  and  the  rejection  of  the  thought  of 
God  making  a  clay  image  out  of  the  earth  are 
nothing  to  religious  faith.  They  have  no  more 
to  do  with  faith  than  the  binding  of  the  book 
has  to  do  with  the  author's  ideas.  We  must 
readjust  our  Christian  philosophies  from  time 
to  time,  as  more  and  more  scientific  research 
shows  us  the  facts  of  God's  universe,  but  the 
real  heart  and  core  of  religious  faith  will  remain 
the  same,  and  men  will  still  believe  in  the  Love 
of  God  who  has  given  His  Son  for  the  life  of 
the  world  and  the  infinite  value  of  that  im- 
mortal being,  man,  for  whom  the  Son  of  God 
has  died  upon  Calvary. 

And  to  you,  young  men  and  women,  I  plead 
for  a  larger  attention  to  the  things  of  faith. 
However  necessary  it  may  seem  for  you  to 
advance  in  your  profession  by  your  own  techni- 
cal studies,  yet  I  ask  you  to  study  with  especial 
fervor  the  things  of  the  Spirit,  the  relation  of 
the  human  soul  to  God.  "For  the  things  which 
are  seen  are  temporal,  but  the  things  which  are 
not  seen  are  eternal." 


The  Personal  Interpretation  of 
Christianity 


One  of  the  provisions  of  this  lecture  founda- 
tion requires  that  something  shall  be  said  on 
the  subject  of  Christian  evidences,  and  also  on 
the  side  of  rig^ht  living,  "without  which  no 
education  can  justly  be  considered  complete." 
In  what  follows  the  chief  point  to  bear  in  mind 
is  this — the  application  of  Christianity  to  the 
individual  life.  The  question  discussed  here  is 
not  what  is  Christianity  in  itself,  but  this, 
rather,  what  is  Christianity  in  myself?  In  the 
subject  proposed,  "The  Personal  Interpretation 
of  Christianity,"  will  be  found  something  which 
touches  our  life  at  all  points  and,  in  its  very 
nature,  is  a  subject  worthy  of  most  careful 
consideration.  The  best  christian  evidence 
after  all  is  a  worthy  christian  life.  While  it  is 
apparent  that  much  that  is  necessary  to  an 
exhaustive  treatment  of  this  subject  will  have 
to  be  omitted,  it  is  sufficient  for  the  purpose  in 
hand  to  point  out  the  claim  of  Christianity  as 
a  revelation  of  God  and  the  bearing  of  Christ- 
ianity on  the  life  of  man. 

Over  the  triple  doorways  of  the  cathedral  of 
Milan  are  three  noteworthy  inscriptions  which 


3^     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

^race  the  noble  arches.  Above  one  of  the  side 
doors  is  carved  a  beautiful  wreath  of  roses,  and 
underneath  are  these  words,  *'A11  that  pleases  is 
but  for  a  moment."  Over  the  other  side  door 
is  a  sculptured  cross,  and  beneath  is  written, 
''All  that  which  troubles  us  is  but  for  a 
moment."  While  over  the  great  main  entrance 
is  inscribed,  "Only  that  is  important  which  is 
eternal."  What  is  the  significance  of  these  say- 
ings? Is  it  not  this,  that  somewhere  between 
our  enjoyments  and  our  anxieties  lies  the  true 
sphere  of  life,  where  we  work  out  our  destiny 
in  the  light  and  by  estimates  which  are  eternal  ? 
Man  is  immortal,  on  the  side  of  eternity,  not  "a 
soulless  body  on  a  godless  earth." 

It  is  characteristic  of  man  to  become  so  occu- 
pied and  absorbed  in  that  which  enchants  or 
enslaves  him  as  to  postpone  or  minimize  that 
which  is  important.  In  a  very  deep  sense,  man 
makes  his  own  mind,  he  makes  his  own  world; 
and,  as  he  goes  through  life,  with  his  own 
interests  at  heart,  he  meets  and  then  makes  or 
misses  his  own  heaven.  He  is  confident  that 
he  is  moving  somewhere.  He  is.  But  it  is 
significant,  with  a  difference,  whether  this  be 
progress  or  whether  it  is  only  motion.  It  is  a 
matter  of  supreme  importance  that  when  we 
cast  off  the  moorings  we  do  not  forget  to  ship 
the  rudder.  Afterwards  it  makes  all  the  differ- 
ence imaginable  whether  we  are  simply  adrift  or 
whether  we  are  on  a  voyage  steering  on  some 
definite  course.     The  inquiry,  "Where  bound?" 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      39 

should  never  find  us  unable  to  answer.  There 
must  be  a  determined  somewhere  in  every  true 
life.  For  to  be  indefinite  is  to  become  impos- 
sible, and  to  be  impossible  is  to  lack  the 
"ambition  of  distinctiveness."  This  would  be 
nothino-  less  than  a  severe  impeachment  both  of 
purpose  and  character.  "It  appertains  only  to 
weak  minds,"  said  Lacordaire,  "to  give  them- 
selves up  to  the  stream  of  life  without  once 
asking  whither  it  is  leading  them." 

Now,  God  has  given  us  a  definite  way  to 
save  us  from  all  uncertainty,  and  this  pathway 
— to  change  the  figure — is  marked  and  echoes 
with  the  footsteps  of  Jesus  Christ.  The 
christian  revelation  is  the  gospel  of  right  living. 
The  personal  interpretation  is  to  believe  God, 
accept  His  word,  and  give  Him  our  life.  God 
has  settled  what  Christianity  is  in  itself;  we 
have  to  meet  the  question,  "What  is  Christian- 
ity   in    ourselves  ?" 

There  is  an  urgent  protest  to  enter  against 
treating  the  revelation  of  God  as  though  it  were 
in  open  court.  It  is  not  something  to  be  dis- 
cussed and  adjudicated  —  something  whose 
metes  and  bounds  must  be  settled  by  argument, 
agreement,  or,  may  be,  by  compromise.  What 
is  left  after  such  a  process  is  not  worth  discuss- 
ing. Men  have  som.etimes  rejected  the  things 
of  God  when  presented  as  an  open  question. 
Christianity  is  not  man's  opinion — it  is  God's 
ultimatum. 

We  shall  do  well,  therefore,  to  bear  in  mind 


40     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

there  are  some  thinje;-s  which  are  closed  ques- 
tions. The  revelation  of  God  must  be  so 
treated,  inasmuch  as  we  are  absolutely  power- 
less to  add  to  or  to  diminish  from  the  original. 
The  divine  revelation  is  not  enriched  by  one 
ray  of  human  thought,  includes  no  human  sug- 
gestion, nor  does  it  bear  any  marks  whatever 
of  having  been  submitted  to  man's  criticism  or 
modification.  It  is  a  closed  question  as  to  its 
contents,  and  is  presented  to  man's  acceptance 
as  the  will  and  law  of  God.  As  the  revelation 
of  God,  it  makes  known  to  us  what  we  know 
of  God;  and  what  we  know  of  God  we  know 
are  his  own  statements  and  self-unveiling.  We 
may  have  evidences  and  interpretations  which 
illustrate  and  enlarge  God's  self-declaration,  but 
they  add  nothing,  as  fact,  to  what  God  has  been 
pleased  to  make  known  of  Himself.  This  reve- 
lation, then,  is  the  source  of  our  knowledge  of 
divine  things,  and  is  open  in  one  sense  only, 
namely,  to  all  reverent  investigation  and  accept- 
ance. It  is  permanent  as  fact,  but  under  the 
office  of  the  Holy  Spirit  it  may  be  progressive 
to  apprehension. 

Some  men,  however,  have  insisted  on  going 
back  of  the  revelation  in  the  effort  to  investigate 
God  Himself.  A  little  reflection  should  con- 
vince them  of  the  futility  of  such  a  course.  For 
God,  surely,  is  incapable  of  analysis,  of  demon- 
stration, or  of  comprehension.  Men  make  their 
own  difficulties  where  they  have  refused  to 
consider  anything  regarding  God  as  a  closed 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      41 

question.  In  their  investigation  they  have 
insisted  on  comprehending  God,  an  attempt 
which  v^ould  place  God  within  defined  bound- 
aries, and  then  seek  to  ^o  outside  of  the  Being 
of  God  to  scrutinize,  verify  and  estimate  His 
worth  and  claims  and  Person.  In  this  procedure 
they  have  eg-re^iously  failed  to  appreciate  that, 
in  order  to  be  successful,  man  would  have  to 
be  eternal,  infinite,  omniscient — in  other  words, 
man,  himself,  would  have  to  be  God.  Some 
men  are  making  the  mistake  of  pursuing  the 
inquiry,  "What  is  God?"  instead  of  asking  the 
question  open  to  an  answer,  "Who  is  God?" 

If  we  are  to  know  God  at  all,  we  must  take 
Him  at  his  own  word.  God's  self-declaration 
not  only  requires  no  indorsement,  but  is  essen- 
tially incapable  of  parity  of  judgment  from  any 
source.  God  is  not  under  the  auspices  of 
humanity;  therefore,  only  God  can  vouch  for 
God.  If  we  do  not  take  God  on  His  own  state- 
ment, there  is  no  other  source  to  be  used  as  a 
substitute  for  knowing  Him.  In  that  statement, 
Jesus  Christ  stands  behind  every  word  that  He 
ever  uttered.  "His  words,"  says  Harnack, 
"speak  to  us  across  the  centuries  with  the  fresh- 
ness of  the  present."  They  are  new  in  every 
age,  supreme  by  every  test,  and  stand  absolutely 
alone  in  this,  that  no  word  of  Christ  has  ever 
required  restatement  or  re-enactment. 

Acceptance  of  this  revelation  involves  all  that 
flows  out  of  it.  Christianity,  to  be  sure,  has  a 
revelation,  has  a  creed,  has  a  theology,  has  a 


42     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

doctrine — but  "it  is  a  life."  We  find  in  the 
things  of  God  only  what  we  employ  the  truth 
in  seeking.  We  cannot,  in  reason,  employ  an 
untruth  to  find  God.  *'Be  it  unto  thee  according 
to  thy  faith."  What  we  find  will  depend  upon 
the  spirit  which  we  take  with  us  into  the  search, 
and  the  answer,  mark  it  well,  will  always  be 
in  kind.  **The  high  priest  entered  the  Holy  of 
Holies,  and  found  God.  A  king  entered  and 
came  forth  a  leper.  Pompey  entered  and  found 
it  empty."  Reverent,  sacrilegious,  sceptical, 
inquiry  have  not  now,  as  they  had  not  then, 
identical  answers.  How  true  in  this  connection 
are  the  words  of  Anselm:  "He  who  does  not 
believe  will  not  experience,  and  he  who  has 
not  experienced  will  not  understand." 

As  we  face  the  promises  and  the  privileges 
held  out  to  us  in  the  revelation  of  Jesus  Christ, 
let  us  clearly  understand  that  only  to  truthful- 
ness of  soul  can  truths  of  God  be  made  known. 
"Like  cannot  know  like,  unless  there  is  a  like 
bent  of  soul."  Knowledge  will  not  save  man, 
for  without  truthfulness  in  our  doing  there  is 
no  truth  in  our  knowing.  If  we  have  mortal 
sincerity,  we  shall  have  "not  only  certainty  of 
faith,  but  also  certainty  of  discernment." 
Christianity  was  given  for  adaptation  to  human 
life.  It  was  not  given,  however,  through  the 
New  Testament,  until  men  had  first  made  it, 
not  an  experiment,  but  an  experience.  It  was 
revealed  to  men  and  demonstrated  by  men 
before  men  were  used  by  the  Holy  Ghost  as  the 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      43 

agents  or  instruments  to  make  known  "the  faith 
once  delivered  to  the  saints."  What,  therefore, 
was  possible  for  them,  as  men,  is,  under  the 
Holy  Spirit,  possible  for  us  men. 

I. 

If  Christianity  is  to  be  true  for  us,  it  must 
be  true  in  us.  To  realize  its  meaning,  we  must 
make  it  a  personal  interpretation.  What  do 
we  mean  by  this  ?  In  the  first  place,  Christianity 
is  a  revelation  to  us.  It  demands  that  we  shall 
treat  it  as  law.  If  we  accept  it,  we  discover 
that  Christianity  deals  with  the  individual,  and 
our  personal  interpretation  is  to  make,  through 
faith  and  obedience,  a  new  life  and  a  new  char- 
acter. Our  Lord  gave  not  only  a  new  law,  but, 
as  we  shall  see,  a  new  life  and  a  new  motive. 

It  would  matter  very  little  to  us,  indeed, 
whether  there  were  any  law  of  God  at  all  if  it 
were  addressed  to  angels  and  not  to  humanity. 
Such  revelation  or  law  would  have  no  bearing 
whatever  upon  man  were  he  devoid  of  religious 
capacity.  Where  he  could  have  no  knowledge, 
and  where  he  is  denied  admission,  there  he 
would  be  free  from  all  responsibility.  But  this 
revelation,  on  God's  express  declaration,  is 
intended  and  was  entrusted  to  man  in  a  living 
contact  with  a  living  God.  There  is  within  us 
a  seat  of  God  consciousness,  and  we  cannot 
successfully  deny  God  to  our  own  soul.  Beyond 
all  cavil  we  possess  the  mystery  of  consciousness 
which  whispers  to  us  of  an  origin  with  a  divine 


44     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

impress,  of  a  destiny  which  outlasts  the  imper- 
fectly realized  aims  of  earth.  Whatever  in  our 
temporal  career  may  succeed  or  disappoint, 
whatever  the  attempt  or  falling  short,  above  and 
beyond  these  is  the  permanent  hope — concrete 
and  explicit — that  we  shall  ^ain  those  things  to 
which  our  faith  has  wedded  our  soul.  This 
hope  is  based  upon  our  belief  that  the  law  which 
binds  us  binds  God  also  to  His  promises,  and 
that  God  to  be  God  at  all,  must  be  true  to  Him- 
self and  to  us.  Thus  we  are  attached  to  God, 
not  by  laws  and  fetters  which  bind  us  and  re- 
strain our  liberty,  but  by  love  and  obedience 
which  hold  us,  and  yet  make  us  free.  We  have 
but  one  liberty — a  life  under  the  law  of  truth. 
Any  other  life  is  lawlessness. 

Some  men  would  make  this  attitude  of  God 
toward  man  a  mechanical  rather  than  a  vital 
relationship — ^as  though  God  rules  without 
instead  of  within  us.  Make  God  external,  far 
off  and  unrelated — an  impersonal  God,  holding 
sway  through  the  medium  of  mechanical  laws, 
and  you  take  away  all  that  is  so  necessary  to 
human  needs — ^the  personal  sympathy  and 
assistance  toward  which  men  open  their  hearts 
and  stretch  forth  their  hands.  Let  no  one 
beguile  us,  and  let  us  not  deceive  ourselves,  into 
making  this  a  "superficial  kinship."  For  a  con- 
ception of  God  as  One  so  remote  and  aloof  from 
man  that  He  hears  not,  cares  not,  aids  not,  is 
clearly  an  unchristian  conception,  and  denies 
the  attributes  of  an  all-loving,  personal  God.   If 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      45 

God  knows  all  that  would  condemn  man,  and 
stretches  forth  no  hand  to  save,  then  we  must 
re-write  the  gospels  and  readjust  our  faith.  The 
greatness  of  God  and  the  imminence  of  God 
are  set  forth  in  His  unveiling  of  Himself,  and 
the  one  is  as  truly  fact  as  the  other.  Dr.  Rob- 
bins,  the  author  of  "A  Christian  Apologetic," 
states  this  clearly  where  he  says:  "It  is  the 
function  of  faith  to  fuse  the  seeming^  contradic- 
tion of  God's  transcendence  and  His  imminence ; 
it  is  doubtful  if  intellect  alone  is  competent  to 
the  task.  But  against  the  arbitrary  divorce 
between  the  divine  and  the  human,  this  separ- 
ateness  of  creation  which  tends  to  reduce  God 
to  an  abstraction,  all  the  profounder  thoug^ht  of 
the  world  raises  a  voice  of  protest.  To  yield 
assent  to  it  is  not  only  to  cast  scorn  upon  the 
deepest  insight  of  philosopher  and  poet,  but  to 
do  despite  to  the  imperative  demands  of  the 
relig"ious  consciousness  of  mankind." 

"God's  greatness  flaws  round  our  incompleteness, 
Round  our  restlessness  His  rest." 

In  the  second  place,  this  revelation  to  us  is  not 
only  that  we  should  hear  of  the  law,  but  in  treat- 
ing it  as  law  we  should  know  for  what  purpose 
it  is  to  be  applied.  As  essential  to  his  develop- 
ment man  is  to  receive  it  for  a  two-fold  applica- 
tion:  (i)  To  .govern  his  life;  and  (2)  to  save 
his  soul. 

The  law  of  God  makes  demands  upon  the  life 
of  man — demands  which  are  intense  in  their 
purpose  and  prospect.     We  are  not  asked  to 


4^     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

believe  only  that  the  laws  of  Gk)d  are  the  true, 
but  we  are  commanded  to  be  true  by  those  laws ; 
to  give  our  allegiance  to  God  and  then  both  test 
and  attest  our  loyalty  by  our  obedience.  We 
can  acquire  nothing-  for  which  we  have  not  given 
something  out  of  ourselves.  The  effort  and  the 
sacrifice  will  be  in  proportion  to  the  desired 
object.  Nothing,  after  all,  is  really  our  own 
for  which  we  have  not  rendered  some  equiva- 
lent. God  gives  us  no  gifts  without  correspond- 
ing obligations.  If  the  things  of  God  are  true 
in  themselves,  they  are  true  for  us  only  when 
they  are  true  in  us,  and  are  personally  used  as 
the  rule  and  guide  of  our  life.  "The  spirit  of 
man  is  the  candle  of  the  Lord,  lighted  from  God 
and  lighting  us  to  God." 

Having  a  rule  and  guide,  and  living  up  to  the 
light  of  our  convictions,  we  shall  derive  from 
our  Christianity  in  proportion  to  the  moral  sin- 
cerity and  the  personal  courage  which  we  put 
into  it.  Holding  a  certain  faith,  a  man  keeps 
his  soul  free  from  the  perplexities  and  uncer- 
tainties which  arise  in  the  lives  of  some  men. 
He  may  hold  his  beliefs  and  his  doubts  at  the 
same  time,  without  fear  or  misgiving,  and, 
better  still,  without  confusion.  There  is  no  dis- 
honor in  honest  doubt,  for  doubt  is  the  soul's 
struggle  and  the  soul's  right  to  know.  Ten 
thousand  doubts  do  not  constitute  one  denial. 
Our  doubts,  it  may  be,  are  only  our  faith  which 
has  never  reached  and  felt  the  sunshine.  With 
the  law  of  God  to  guide  us  in  unknown  ways, 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity      47 

we  shall  be  able  to  solve  what  is  necessary  to 
satisfy.  These  words  are  timely:  "Go  on  be- 
lieving your  beliefs  and  doubting  your  doubts, 
but  do  not  make  the  mistake  of  believing  your 
doubts  and  doubting  your  beliefs." 

The  doubts  and  temptations  and  struggles 
which  come  to  us  are  our  opportunities  for  spir- 
itual manhood.  Some  men  will  make  difficul- 
ties out  of  them.  You  cannot  protect  some  men 
from  using  every  opportunity  to  make  a  mistake. 
When  we  seek  a  spiritual  career  we  are  not  shut 
up  to  the  painful  uncertainty  of  making  critical 
guesses  at  life.  The  law  which  governs  us  is  the 
same  law  which  guides  us.  It  is  not  some  intri- 
cate way  which  we  are  to  traverse  wherein  we 
are  easily  confused  and  often  bewildered ;  for  we 
shall  miss  the  way  only  so  far  as  we  miss  the 
truth.  "The  Christian  religion,"  to  quote  Har- 
nack  once  more,  "is  something  simple  and  sub- 
lime; it  means  one  thing  and  one  thing  only: 
Eternal  life  in  the  midst  of  time  by  the  strength 
and  under  the  eyes  of  God."  By  its  very  nature, 
then,  the  law  of  God  will  be  our  guide,  or  it  will 
be  our  judge.  How  far  a  man  will  follow  his 
spiritual  intelligence  is  a  personal  problem — a 
question  of  moral  integrity  and  spiritual  insight. 

Not  only  is  the  revelation  to  us  a  law  to 
govern  life — it  goes  further  and  deeper — it  is  to 
save  man's  soul.  "The  spirit  of  man  is  always 
praying  for  light  and  revelation  is  the  answer." 
If  we  take  hold  only  of  the  natural  elements  of 
life,  we  are  simply  clinging  with  both  hands  to 


4^      Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

death.  Natural  existence  ends  in  death;  it  is 
the  spiritual  which  takes  hold  of  life.  Man  has 
no  higher  honor  than  this :  God  having  created 
him,  and  recreated  him  by  redemption,  gave 
him  a  law  and  the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  then,  having  done  all,  God  trusted  man 
with  himself.  Man,  therefore,  has  a  very  real 
part  in  his  own  salvation. 

So  many  people  face  this  all-important  ques- 
tion with  no  definite  course  of  action.  They 
meet  it  with  theory  and  speculation,  they  weigh 
and  balance,  propose  and  offset,  postpone  and 
hesitate,  until  they  come  to  moral  and  spiritual 
stagnation.  There  is  such  a  thing,  a  very  real 
thing,  as  losing  initiative  and  energy  in  every 
spiritual  faculty.  A  man  may  stir  up  a  roll  of 
difficulties  without  ever  settling  a  fact  or  arriv- 
ing at  a  conviction.  Then  there  is  another 
danger  of  "mistaking  obscurity  for  profundity 
and  muddiness  for  depth."  There  is  profound 
meaning  for  every  man  in  this  thought  that  part 
of  his  salvation  is  to  be  saved  from  himself. 
Saved,  sometimes,  from  an  intellectual  dissipa- 
tion which  "feeds  the  intellect  and  starves  the 
soul." 

The  revelation  which  gives  to  man  some- 
thing for  his  salvation  is  that  he  may  rediscover 
himself,  in  the  light  of  the  image  of  God.  Now, 
no  man  seriously  pretends  that  he  has  discovered 
God  through  himself,  but  to  have  found  his 
genuine,  godlike,  destined  self  in  the  face  of 
Jesus  Christ.     This  recovery  of  his  true  man- 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     49 

hood  leads  him  by  way  of  atonement  to  work 
out  his  salvation. 

Let  us  ask  in  the  next  place,  what  is  the 
salvation?  Is  it  salvation  from  punishment? 
This  is  a  very  common  answer.  Is  it  sal- 
vation from  pain?  This,  again,  is  often 
,^iven  as  its  meaning.  But  these  are 
secondary  considerations,  and  are  wholly 
inadequate  to  satisfy  the  true  meaning  of  our 
inquiry.  Pain  and  punishment  are  the  conse- 
quence of  personal  acts.  There  is  something 
which  exists  before  pain  and  punishment — 
something  which  brings  a  man  face  to  face  with 
what  he  is,  and  with  what  he  has  done  and  is 
doing;  afterwards  with  the  consequence.  Reve- 
lation shows  us  that  sin  is  sin,  as  God  sees  it. 
Salvation  is  salvation  from  sin  itself,  not  from 
pain  and  punishment.  To  be  saved  is  to  be 
saved  from  the  cause,  and  the  curse  which 
produces  these  effects.  If  man  Is  saved,  he  is 
saved  from  sin  here  and  now,  for  life  and  for 
eternity. 

We  do  not  have  to  go  to  revelation  to  find 
what  sin  is.  It  is  a  fact  and  curse  written  in 
the  nature  and  experience  of  all  men.  Sin 
is  not  an  invention  of  the  gospel;  it  made  a 
gospel  necessary.  It  is  no  bugbear  of  the 
church  or  figment  of  theology.  Theology  de- 
fines what  it  is,  and  the  church  is  our  city  of 
refuge.  Ah,  no !  every  man  speaking  out  of  his 
own  experience  knows  that  sin  is  and  what  it 
is  in  the  bitterness  of  his  own  heart.    Revelation 


50     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

shows  us  what  it  is,  against  whom  it  is  com- 
mitted, declares  its  penalty,  offers  a  remedy  and 
opens  the  way  of  escape.  It  is  serious  enough 
to  mean  a  death  struggle,  either  to  conquer  or 
to  be  conquered.  That  man  is  neither  safe  nor 
sane  who  dares  to  laugh  at  sin.  It  is  so  serio«$ 
that,  under  the  eyes  of  God,  we  are  pledged  to 
a  downright,  outright,  lifelong  battle  against 
the  desires  and  appetites  which  hold  us  in  self- 
surrender,  against  the  weak  self-love,  the  inert 
will,  the  indolence  or  the  cowardliness  which 
have  allowed  our  soul  to  be  misled  by  disloyalty 
and  to  become  shackled  with  dishonor.  If  this 
battle  is  too  heroic  for  some  souls,  then  God 
can  do  nothing  for  the  man  who  will  do  nothing 
for  himself.  But  this  God  does  offer  to  do 
for  all  men :  we  are  delivered  from  the  power 
of  sin  by  the  love  of  God  in  a  life  with  God; 
and  we  are  delivered  from  the  penalty  by  His 
forgiveness.  For  no  enlightened,  true-hearted 
man  can  thus  ever  be  "a  meaningless,  pointless 
struggle  toward  a  meaningless,  pointless  end." 

XL 

Thus  far  we  have  considered  Christianity  as  a 
revelation  to  us.  The  personal  interpretation  of 
the  truths  of  God  carry  us  forward  in  a  develop- 
ment which  makes  of  His  laws  something  which 
is  to  be  treated  as  a  life.  This  is  Christianity 
revealed  in  us.  There  is  very  little  that  is  true 
for  us  as  law  which  is  untrue  for  us  as  life.  If 
there  is  any  firm  grasp  of  God's  truth  we  shall. 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     5 1 

by  faith  and  obedience,  realize  the  meaning  of 
a  revelation  in  us. 

Now,  can  we  put  any  sharp,  clear  meaning 
into  our  Christianity?  Are  we  so  keyed  to  the 
truths  that  we  dare  to  live  them,  able  to  stand 
for  them,  willing,  if  need  be,  to  sacrifice  or  even 
to  suffer  for  them?  '*We  suffer,"  it  has  been 
said,  "because  we  sin;  we  sometimes  sin  because 
we  decline  to  suffer."  Our  religion  is  no  relax- 
ation. It  is  no  fugitive  impulse  and  pious  fancy. 
If  it  is  only  that  then  it  is  only  this : 

"Like  snow  upon  a  river, 
A  moment  white,  then  gone  forever." 

If  it  is  only  a  little  morality  tinged  with  a 
little  emotion,  it  will  tantalize  because  it  is  noi 
true.  This  is  the  question,  "Is  it  possible  for 
men  to  come  into  vital  touch  and  connection 
with  Jesus  Christ,  to  live  his  laws  and  answer 
with  their  life?" 

There  are  some  people  who  seem  to  have  no 
power  of  decision  because  of  a  lack  of  discrim- 
ination and  of  self-determination.  "They  feel 
the  things  they  ought  to  be  beating  beneath  the 
things  they  are,"  and  this  feeling  brings  them 
near  to  a  tendency  to  act,  but  deserts  them  in 
the  crucial  moment  of  supreme  test.  The 
tendency  to  act  without  acting  inevitably  results 
not  only  in  the  loss  of  powerj  but  also  in  the 
loss  of  opportunity.  They  put  no  clear  intention 
or  emphatic  purpose  into  life.  What  other 
people  make  out  of  life  by  heroic  self-determina- 
tion, the  indeterminate  people  regard  as  good 


52     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

luck  or  ^ood  fortune.  There  is  no  genuine  suc- 
cess for  any  man  which  is  not  earned.  Success, 
by  the  way,  is  this:  to  be  in  the  rig-ht  place  at 
the  ri^ht  time  with  the  power  to  make  a  decision. 
Now  the  personal  interpretation  of  Christianity 
is  to  make  it  a  life,  a  revelation  in  us.  The 
difficulty  of  the  christian  life  is  that  we  only 
half  live  it.  Where  we  only  half  live  it,  we  are 
to  be  classified  with  those  *'Who  have  just 
enoug-h  religion  to  make  them  miserable  and  not 
quite  enouj2[h  to  make  them  happy."  Man  may 
do  much  to  "disenchant  heaven  and  disillus- 
ionize the  ima^e  of  God,"  but  somehow  he  has 
always  found  it  harder  to  disbelieve  than  to 
believe.  His  main  limitation  is  to  fail  in  living 
what  he  does  believe.  This  is  his  weakness,  and 
his  weakness  may  become  his  caricature. 
Apropos  of  this  there  is  a  bitter  epigram — bitter 
because  seemingly  true — ''that  more  evil  is  done 
in  the  world  by  weak  men  than  by  wicked 
men." 

Accepting,  then,  the  truths  of  God  as  some- 
thing to  be  translated  into  a  life,  we  lay  hold 
of  the  profound  fact  that  humanity  is  rooted  in 
the  eternal.  The  underlying  hope  of  all 
spiritual  attainment  is  this,  our  personal  rela- 
tionship to  God.  "To  as  many  as  received  Him 
to  them  gave  He  power  to  become  the  sons  of 
God,  even  to  as  many  as  believed  on  His  name." 
This  brings  out  the  reassuring  truth  of  God's 
nearness.  Near  as  our  pressing  needs,  near  as 
our  hardy  endeavors,  near  as  our  soul  is  open 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     53 

to  make  room  in  our  life  for  the  temple  of  God. 
There  must  be  a  Holy  of  Holies  in  every  man's 
soul,  where  he  can  meet  God  and  pray  to  Him, 
saying,  "Speak  to  me  that  I  may  see  Thee." 
For  man  will  never  discover  nor  realize  his  true 
nature  unless  he  meets  with  and  lives  in  touch 
with  the  love  and  sympathy  of  God.  ''This  is 
life  eternal,  that  they  mi^ht  know  Thee,  the 
only  true  God,  and  Jesus  Christ,  whom  Thou 
hast  sent."  We  shall  have  a  strong-,  clear  soul- 
^rasp  of  this  vital  relationship  with  God  when 
''our  life  is  hid  with  Christ  in  God."  Then  will 
follow  a  deeper  apprehension  that  God  com- 
municates His  truths  through  His  son,  through 
His  word,  and  through  His  church.  We  then 
meet  Him  where,  for  and  to  us,  He  communi- 
cates His  grace  and  pardon  and  life  through 
His  Sacraments.  The  indwelling  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  in  man  is  the  informins:  power,  and  by 
this  power  we  come  to  know  God,  the  extension 
of  the  Incarnation,  the  efficacy  of  the  cross,  in 
a  vital  contact  with  Jesus  Christ — the  union  of 
the  branches  with  the  vine.  It  means,  and  it 
should  mean,  nothing  less  than  this :  that  we  are 
constitutionally  related  to  Jesus  Christ.  The 
ideal  hidden  in  our  hearts  becomes  visible  in 
our  lives  as  we  see  in  Jesus  Christ  what  man 
is  like,  and  see  in  ourselves  what  Christ  is  like. 
If  this  truth  sinks  deep  into  our  souls,  if  only 
we  are  sincere  not  to  mar  the  truth  by  dealing 
with  the  outside  of  it,  then  it  will  "disappear  in 
us  as  light  and  reappear  in  us  as  life." 


54     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

Relationship  with  God  discloses  the  true 
nobility  of  manhood.  By  ri^ht  of  origin  we 
call  God  our  Father.  Let  no  man,  therefore, 
take  his  life  at  too  low  an  estimate,  for  in  his 
spiritual  ancestry  he  inherits  and  is  endowed 
with  an  imperishable  distinction.  As  a  son  of 
God  he  stands  in  the  nobility  of  his  manhood, 
only  once  removed  from  God  in  dignity,  in 
majesty,  in  honor.  Created  in  the  likeness  of 
God,  infinite  in  scope,  eternal  in  destiny,  he  is 
the  climax  of  God's  handiwork,  the  child  of 
God's  love.  Not  only  is  he  eligible  to  God's 
truth — his  importance  is  further  signalized  in 
this :  he  is  chosen  as  a  representative  of  God,  an 
ambassador  and  mouthpiece  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Conscious  of  this,  he  must  be  a  higher,  holier, 
truer  man  for  God's  trust  in  him.  Let  him 
ignore  or  fail  to  grasp  this  inspiration  and 
honor,  and  the  form  of  his  visage  changes.  His 
infiniteness  becomes  indefiniteness,  his  scope  a 
weary  chaos,  his  destiny  the  shameless  neglect 
of  one  who  is  foot-glued  and  flesh-bound  to 
some  lesser  plan,  groping  along  some  lower 
level  because  his  soul  is  sucked  dry  of  all  aspira- 
tion until  it  becomes  incapable  of  inspiration. 
What  loss  could  be  greater  than  tliis,  for  a  man's 
heart  to  hold  only  the  ashes  of  its  sacred  fire ! 

With  such  a  heritage,  if  Christianity  is  a  reve- 
lation in  us,  it  must,  perforce,  demand  response 
and  correspondence.  These  demands  are  im- 
perial. First  of  all,  every  man  stands  as  the 
pledge  for  his  own  life.     He  must  fill  up  the 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     55 

measure  of  his  possibility,  and  for  this  he  can 
have  no  sponsor  and  no  surety.  His  possibili- 
ties are  only  as  practical  as  he  makes  them. 
There  may  be  difficulties  and  there  may  be 
struggles,  but  man  is  free  to  meet  the  one  and 
make  the  other.  Man  must  have  something 
v^hich  calls  him  out  into  the  open  where  he 
stands  up  and  is  counted.  No  man  may  take 
heroism  in  a  poetic  sense  and  fulfill  himself. 
He  needs  a  vigorous  faith  in  a  stupendous  task 
to  preserve  for  him  a  Christianity  which  is 
neither  mollusk  nor  invertebrate,  as  he  stands 
erect  in  the  possibility  and  integrity  of  his  man- 
hood, looking  Jesus  Christ  in  the  face.  The 
attempt  at  such  a  life  is  in  no  ''suggested  feel- 
ing or  imitated  conduct."  It  is  attained,  if  it  is 
attained  at  all,  by  no  process  of  emotional  sensi- 
bility, by  no  excited  or  exalted  feeling,  for 
''emotion  is  not  conviction,  and  feeling  is  not 
faith."  Emotion  is  too  often  the  effervescence 
of  courage.  There  is  something  in  our  religion 
like  that  defined  of  art,  where  it  is  said,  "Be- 
tween the  theory  of  art  and  the  beginning  of 
art  there  is  a  fatal  interval."  Between  know- 
ing how  to  do  a  thing  and  doing  that  very  thing 
— that  is  the  crux;  but  it  is  the  boundary  line 
between  success  and  failure.  St.  James  stated 
it  in  this  form,  "Therefore  to  him  that  knoweth 
to  do  good,  and  doeth  it  not,  to  him  it  is  sin." 

When  a  man  is  true  to  his  convictions,  he  is 
true  to  some  conclusion.  If  he  must  fight  with 
body,  mind  and  soul  to  transform  possibilities 


56     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

into  visible  things,  the  man  made  manifest,  it 
is  unheroic  to  ask  that  this  be  made  easy. 
Easy! — such  is  the  ''fatal  interval" — the  seduc- 
tive temptation,  the  mental  sedative  of  the  man 
who  has  no  moral  aim.  How  far  this  has  led 
to  disability  each  man  can  determine  for  himself, 
as  he  accepts  or  avoids  this  self-revelation,  that 
there  is  no  character  as  ''there  is  no  virtue  with- 
out temptation  and  stru^^le  and  victory." 

Let  a  man  take  up  his  manhood  and  show 
what  is  in  him.  Let  him  look  up,  aim  hio^h,  and 
attain;  then  he  will  take  his  life  seriously  and 
reverently,  and  he  will  not  be  troubled  with 
anxieties  which  may  be  avoided  nor  confused 
with  a  babel  of  queries  which  have  no  answer. 
Then  shall  he  know  out  of  his  own  experience 
that  no  wron^  can  ever  satisfy  and  no  truth 
ever  disappoint.  He  has  the  witness  in  him- 
self that  "evil  often  conquers  but  it  never 
triumphs." 

In  the  next  place  man,  throu^^h  his  relation- 
ship to  God  and  the  wealth  of  his  possibilities, 
faces  another  fact,  namely,  his  responsibility. 
This  puts  a  man  on  record  as  to  whether  his 
life  squares  with  the  truth.  Responsibility  is 
something  which  cleaves  to  the  individual.  This 
is  a  personal  matter  in  which  no  one  can  share. 
We  may  receive  counsel  from  others,  we  may 
be  guided  and  informed  of  God,  but  we  can 
refer  our  responsibility  neither  to  God  nor  to 
man;  it  lies  at  our  own  door.  Men  may  go 
with  us,  in  things  that  are  mutual,  but  no  man 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     57 

can  go  for  us  in  anything  that  is  personal.  We 
may  have  equals,  but  we  have  no  parallel.  We 
cannot  live  with  another  man's  life;  we  cannot 
think  with  another  man's  mind,  nor  aspire  with 
another  man's  soul.  Man  stands  alone  in  the 
sacredness  of  his  own.  individuality,  unmistaken 
in  his  identity  and  unconfused  in  his  own 
accountability.  The  message  of  God  is  not 
addressed  to  the  mass,  but  to  the  man,  and  man 
answers  for  his  life  with  his  life. 

Responsibility  met  man — it  is  his  birth — 
meets  him  at  every  point  of  contact  with  life 
and  then  reveals  him  or  exposes  him  in  what 
he  is.  It  demands  an  answer  to  this  question, 
whether  the  truth  in  his  knowing  is  the  same 
truth  in  his  living?  We  may  be  content  to  be 
just  like  other  people,  too  easily  satisfied  with 
a  decent  and  average  christian  respectability. 
But  God  never  made  us  like  other  people.  In 
earth  and  heaven  we  have  no  counterpart  and 
no  superior.  It  is  therefore  self-impeachment 
and  self-abdication  to  permit  our  life  to  sink  and 
become  absorbed  in  that  which  stands  for 
humanity  and  not  for  man.  Mankind  is  divided 
into  man,  and  man  is  the  king  who  can,  he  who 
ever  rules  at  the  head  of  his  own  empire.  Rule 
then,  but  do  not  ruin. 

No  man  can  have  any  gift  of  God  without 
a  corresponding  obligation.  Know  this,  one 
might  as  well  seek  to  escape  from  himself  as  to 
hope  to  escape  from  his  responsibility.  No  man 
is  free  to  accept  or  reject  responsibility.     He 


58     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

would  have  to  be  mentally  deficient  and  morally 
incompetent — idiot  or  insane — to  remain  irre- 
sponsible. For  every  man  the  summons  is  to 
come  forth  and  declare  himself.  It  is  a  judg- 
ment in  the  everlasting  now.  For  him  the  bat- 
tle is  on,  and  henceforth  it  is  career  or  it  is. cari- 
cature, but  it  is  always  the  man  made  manifest, 
either  a  revelation  in  him  or  a  revelation  of 
him. 

III. 

In  dwelling^  on  the  personal  interpretation  of 
Christianity,  we  have  seen,  in  the  first  place,  that 
it  is  a  messag^e  or  revelation  to  us;  in  the  next 
place,  that  it  is  a  life,  or  a  revelation  in  us;  in 
the  last  place,  the  attempt  will  be  to  show  that 
it  is  a  revelation  through  us. 

It  is  one  of  the  characteristic  distinctions  of 
man  that  God  associates  him  with  Himself  in 
carrying  out  His  truths  in  some  objective  way. 
For  such  an  exalted  commission  we  should  feel 
the  necessity  of  keeping  our  lives  fit  for  God's 
use  by  keeping  in  touch  with  some  definite 
personal  service.  Some  men  will  dare  to  go 
into  life  with  no  clear  intention,  with  no  sub- 
lime motive.  The  truths  of  God  seem  to  stop 
when  they  arrive  in  the  lives  of  these  men.  They 
seem  to  have  no  clear  intention  in  God's  employ- 
ment. This  may  be  common  to  most  men,  and 
it  may  explain  why  the  average  christian  does 
not  count  for  as  much  in  the  church  as  the 
average  business  man  does  in  the  market,  or  the 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     59 

averag^e  politician  does  in  the  caucus,  or  the 
average  athlete  in  the  contest.  So  much  Christ- 
ianity is  in  a  state  of  suspended  animation.  It 
is  abstract  not  concrete.  We  need  something 
which  shall  crystalize  our  motive,  emphasize  our 
intention  and  save  our  purpose  from  reaching 
the  vanishing  point.  A  definite  christian  is  the 
only  possible  christian.  This  v;^e  have  when 
Christianity  becomes  a  revelation  through  us. 
If  there  is  any  blurring  of  the  truth  because  we 
are  out  of  focus,  we  need  to  readjust  ourselves. 
If  there  is  any  lowering  of  the  truth,  it  is 
because  it  comes  in  contact  with  an  unworthy 
life.  "There  is  no  alchemy  bv  which  you  can 
get  golden  deeds  from  leaden  instincts."  That 
which  hinders  the  revelation  through  men  may 
be  what  St.  Augustine  said  of  his  own  experi- 
ence, "The  evil  to  which  I  was  so  wonted  held 
me  more  than  the  better  life  which  I  had  not 
tried."  If  we  have  joined  the  ranks,  let  us  face 
the  battle  and  so  fight,  "not  as  one  who  beateth 
the  air." 

What  is  the  nature  of  the  Christianity  to  be 
revealed  through  us?  It  is  an  appointment  of 
God  to  give  something  out  of  our  life  for  our 
love  to  Him  and  for  the  good  of  our  fellowman. 
If  our  Christianity  has  done  anything  for  us,  it 
will  make  us  want  to  do  something  for  others. 
This  takes  a  man  outside  of  himself  and  puts 
him  alongside  the  cares  and  needs  of  his  brother 
man.  In  all  that  we  are  and  in  all  that  we  have, 
we  are  trustees  for  others.     God  has  appointed 


6o    Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

us  to  a  stewardship  of  service,  and  this  is  to 
save  us  from  christian  vagueness,  from  social 
and  spiritual  failure  by  settin,^^  us  at  work. 
Under  this  appointment  every  man  is  account- 
able to  God  for  the  use  of  his  life.  This  is 
truly  a  ministry  that,  by  some  means  within 
our  own  power,  we  make  the  things  of  God 
helpful  to  some  one  else.  Whatever  this  may 
be,  wherever  the  opportunity  arises,  our  work, 
our  share,  can  be  delegated  to  no  man  living. 

Realize  this  and  we  cannot  remain  content 
in  the  selfishness  and  exclusion  of  our  own 
salvation.  We  cannot  stand  as  silent  onlookers 
in  a  world  calling  for  a  hopeful  word  and  a 
helping  hand.  "When  God  would  save  a  man," 
says  St.  Augustine,  "he  does  it  by  way  of  a 
man."  By  you,  and  the  man  to  be  saved  may 
be  your  friend,  the  one  by  your  side  whose 
tendencies  and  temptations  you  know  better 
than  anyone.  You  have  had  fears  and  misgiv- 
ings for  his  safety,  you  have  talked  with  others 
about  him,  you  have  prayed  for  him  again  and 
again,  but  have  you  ever  spoken  to  him  regard- 
ing himself?  There  is  so  much  in  personal 
Christianity  that  is  weak  and  cowardly  because 
it  is  inarticulate.  The  chum  and  associate,  what 
has  he  lost  through  you?  Burn  these  words 
into  your  conscience,  "Ye  shall  not  see  my  face 
except  your  brother  be  with  you."  "Is  there 
not  a  cause?"  Is  there  no  difficulty  which 
another  meets  which  we  could  not  help  to  solve? 
Is  there  no  temptation   which  another  fights, 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     6i 

where  we  could  not  cheer  and  encourage  him 
with  our  love  and  interest  ?  Is  there  a  sin  which 
makes  a  "blight  on  every  flower  and  a  canker 
in  every  fruit"  from  which  we  could  not  rescue 
him?  Is  there  no  anguish,  no  remorse,  no  sor- 
row, no  burden  which  we  could  help  to  lighten 
with  our  loving^  sympathy?  Sympathy!  What 
is  sympathy?  This,  surely  this,  ''two  hearts 
tu^^in^  at  the  same  load."  We  are  ready 
enou,2:h  with  our  criticism  and  our  condemna- 
tion, but  who  is  strong  enough  for  sympathy? 
We  have  little  rig^ht  to  rebuke  where  we  do  not 
love.  If  we  are  strong-  and  able  for  these 
things,  then  our  religion  will  give  us  all  we  need 
and  cost  us  all  it  is  worth  to  others.  Our  Christ- 
ianity has  no  limit,  but  that  of  unfaithfulness. 

Where  do  we  stand  in  a  service  which  costs 
us  something,  if  it  is  worthy  of  God,  and  if 
it  is  worth  anything  at  all  to  man?  Let  us 
remember  that  "opportunity  and  ability  make 
responsibility."  It  is  only  out  of  courage  and 
love  and  sacrifice  that  a  ministry  to  man  is 
formed.  Let  a  man  ask  himself,  is  there  one 
soul  on  earth  a  step  nearer  God  through  any 
personal  effort  of  my  own?  We  may  well  ask 
ourselves,  therefore,  has  anything  that  we  have 
said  or  done  helped  anyone  else  to  do  anything  ? 
Our  example,  influence  and  contact  are  potent 
or  else  they  are  impotent  powers.  If  we  have 
no  example,  we  profane  our  trust;  if  we  have 
no  influence,  it  is  the  hollow  mockery  of  an 
unworthy  life;  if  we  have  no  contact,  we  shall 


62     Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity 

answer  for  it  in  the  day  we  are  asked  "where 
is  thy  brother?"  Shall  we  fall  back  to  the  rear 
in  every  call  to  service  and  join  the  ^reat  nerve- 
less host  who  take  for  their  motto,  ''They  also 
serve  who  only  stand  and  wait?"  There  is  but 
one  consistency  in  this,  the  consistency  of 
nothing-ness.  Never !  we  will  fare  the  duty  and 
bear  the  brunts.  "Let  us  break  the  drum,  but 
hold  up  the  standard!" 

After  all,  you  can  put  no  nerve  into  a  man's 
life,  nothing  higher  or  greater  than  the  ideal  to 
which  his  soul  responds.  When  we  have  an 
ideal  we  have  a  prospect.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  an  ideal  without  faith  and  love  and 
inspiration.  Our  ideal  in  life  should  commit 
us  to  something^  tang^ible,  hopeful  and  per- 
manent. With  an  ideal,  a  little  soul-stir  would 
save  us  from  stag^nation.  We  are  in  the  midst 
of  life,  and  we  are  making  our  own  world,  writ- 
ing our  own  history,  meeting  our  own  heaven. 
Now,  what  sort  of  workmanship  are  we  putting 
into  life?  There  are  only  three  primary  colors 
with  which  to  paint  the  lily,  to  picture  the  glory 
of  the  sunset,  to  portray  the  magnificence  of 
the  landscape,  or  to  describe  the  beauty  and 
the  character  of  the  human  countenance. 
Raphael  and  Rembrandt,  Titian  and  Turner, 
Ct)rot  and  Millet  made  these  primary  and 
secondary  colors  almost  articulate.  There  are 
only  seven  notes  by  means  of  which  to  create 
wondrous  harmonies  of  cantata  and  oratorio,  of 
opera  and  symphony.     Yet  Beethoven,  Haydn, 


Personal  Interpretation  of  Christianity     63 

Mozart,  Liszt,  Warner  and  Chopin  have  moved 
the  world  to  feeling,  to  passion,  to  rapture  and 
to  tears.  There  are  only  a  few  letters  of  the 
alphabet,  but  they  are  the  only  means  of  trans- 
lating all  thought,  all  science,  all  poetry  and 
prose  into  words,  and  transmitting  them  to  man 
and  to  generations.  Moses  and  David,  St. 
John  and  St.  Paul,  Homer  and  Shakespeare, 
Goethe  and  Hugo,  and  a  host  of  others,  have 
made  the  world  anew  and  resonant  with  mean- 
i*^g.  There  are  only  five  senses  out  of  which 
to  create  experience  and  character  and  express 
a  life  by  these  and  the  soul  behind  them; 
humanity  may  be  made  heavenly  or  incarnate 
evil  as  it  moves  heavenward  or  hellward  by  the 
very  use  of  them. 

We  have  only  the  powers  of  a  man,  body, 
mind  and  soul,  to  serve  and  worship  the  all- 
knowing,  all-loving  God.  Angel  or  archangel 
cannot  take  our  place,  live  our  life,  nor  complete 
our  task.  For  all  and  every  need  we  have  God 
and  law,  and  life,  and  stewardship.  We  may 
be  next  to  God  and  great  as  angels,  if  we  stand 
true  to  our  appointment — the  nobility  of  man- 
hood in  the  responsibility  of  service.  "God  will 
measure  a  man's  life  by  the  proportion  that  his 
deed  bears  to  his  opportunity." 
^'Grow  old  along  with  me ! 

The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  wa*  made. 

Our  times  are  in  His  hand 

Who  saith,  'A  whole  I  planned, 

Youth    shows   but   half ;    trust   God ;    see  all,    nor   be 
afraid.' " 


The  Gospel  of  God's   Pardon 


If  we  confess  our  sins.  He  is  faithful  and  just  to 
forgive  us  our  sins,  and  to  cleanse  us  from  all  un- 
righteousness,— I  John,  9. 

A  few  hours  ago  I  had  been  speaking  to 
you  about  the  gospel  of  God's  love.  I  wish 
now  to  try  and  speak  about  the  gospel  of  His 
pardon.  But  let  me  for  a  moment  connect 
what  I  said  this  morning,  with  what  I  shall  try 
to  say  this  evening. 

Every  age  must  have  its  own  gospel  in  a  real 
sense;  must,  in  other  words,  have  its  own  way 
of  looking  at  the  gospel  and  stating  it.  So 
must  each  individual.  No  man  can  preach  the 
gospel,  or  see  the  gospel,  or  live  the  gospel,  in 
quite  the  same  way  as  his  brother  can;  but  yet 
for  all  that,  the  time  surely  has  come  when 
there  ought  to  be  more  of  an  agreement  among 
us  as  to  what  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  in  its 
essence  really  is.  There  are  three  things  that 
are  essential.  I  don't  say  that  these  three  things 
contain  all  that  it  is,  but  I  do  say  that  I  believe 
them  to  be  the  fullest  statement  given  to  us  in 
any  one  passage  of  inspired  writ. 

First,  "God  loved  the  world." 

Not  part  of  the  world,  but  all  the  world ;  not 


66  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

one  race  in  the  world,  but  all  races  in  the  world ; 
not  the  happily  born  and  reared,  but  those  un- 
happily born  and  not  reared;  not  only  as  the 
maker  of  the  world,  the  preserver  of  the  world, 
the  ruler  of  the  world,  but  as  the  lover  of  the 
world.  The  world  is  not  a  law  work,  much  less 
a  chance  work,  but  it  is  a  love  work. 

If  any  one  thinks  this  old  g^ospel  is  always 
easy  to  believe,  he  knows  very  little  about  life. 
Whatever  may  be  the  fault  of  our  ag^e,  as  com- 
pared with  other  a^es,  lack  of  sympathy  is  not 
that  fault;  and,  sympathetically  bound,  not 
merely  to  our  friends,  but  to  all  men  as  we  are 
to-day,  feeling  the  sorrows  and  pains  of  others, 
not  as  shadows  that  fall  across  our  pathway 
merely,  but  as  heavy  burdens  that  sometimes 
crush  into  our  very  souls.  It  is  about  the  hard- 
est thin^  I  know  to  believe  that  the  world  is  a 
love  work.  But  whether  I  can  believe  it  or 
not,  that's  the  g"ospel. 

Second,  "God  so  loved  the  world  that  He 
^ave." 

That  means,  in  short,  that  His  love  is  not  a 
making  love,  or  a  preserving-  love,  or  a  ruling 
love,  but  that  it  is  also  a  suffering  love,  and 
radiant  being  though  He  be,  in  all  the  travail 
and  sorrow  of  His  universe,  He  knows  and  ex- 
periences its  pang.  **Let  us  shut  out  suffering," 
cries  the  superficial  man.  "Yes,  let  us  shut  out 
suffering,"  cries  the  pleasure-seeking  man.  "Let 
us  build  a  lordly  pleasure  house,  and  say  to  our 
soul,  *Dear  soul,  take  thine  ease.'  "    Some  men 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  67 

and  a  few  women  still  do  this,  but  what  sort  of 
people  are  they?  Are  they  the  people  we  re- 
spect? Are  they  the  people  we  follow?  No. 
Man  is  bound  so  closely  to  man,  that  as  the 
plague  strikes  us  all — it  does  strike  us  all — there 
is  no  retiring  to  Bocaccio's  villa  outside 
Florence,  and  there,  tuning  our  harps  and 
wreathing  ourselves  with  flowers,  make  merry 
while  the  deadly  plague  stalks  among  our  fel- 
low-men. You  can't  do  it  to-day.  And  why? 
Because  we  do  profoundly  feel,  when  we  cannot 
even  believe,  that  if  there  is  a  God  at  all,  he  is 
a  God  that  suffers  as  well  as  loves.  The  old 
Olympus  idea  of  God  is  dead,  dead.  On  the 
cool,  shady  brow  of  the  mountain  God  no  longer 
sits,  the  smoke  of  men's  troubled  lives  almost 
gratefully  rising  to  His  nostrils.  No,  he  is 
down  among  men  in  their  toil  and  sorrow,  in 
their  pain  and  crying;  taking  the  little  child  on 
his  knee,  and  weeping  by  the  graveside  of  His 
friend.  So,  long  ago,  men  ventured  to  believe 
that  God  revealed  Himself,  and  once  God  has 
been  so  seen,  men  no  longer  care  for,  or  believe 
in,  the  Olympus  God,  let  him  be  as  thunderous 
or  beautiful  as  he  may. 

*'God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave." 
There  are  all  sorts  of  painfulnesses  on  earth, 
but  there  is  no  pain  like  the  pain  of  giving.  It 
is  by  giving  we  can  test  our  capacity  for  pain  to 
the  highest.  We  will  bear  pain  for  ourselves, 
when  it  is  the  pathway  to  further  health, 
usefulness,     we     can     bear     it     bravely     and 


68  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

without  murmur;  but  if  it  might  be  that 
we  bear  it  in  order  to  save  those  we  loved  then 
we  could  bear  it  more  than  dutifully — we  could 
bear  it  joyfully.  What  will  I  give  for 
the  thing-  I  love?  I  will  give  my  money 
for  my  son,  I  will  give  my  time;  I  will 
give  my  best.  But  what  are  these?  I  will  give 
my  right  hand  for  his  right  hand.  Nay,  there 
is  not  a  father  or  mother  listens  to  me  to-day 
who,  if  it  came  to  be  a  question  of  life  and  death 
itself,  would  not  gladly  say,  "I  would  lay  down 
my  half-worn  life  to-morrow  that  my  child 
might  step  forward  better  to  accomplish,  more 
perfectly  to  finish,  the  tasks  that  I  have  failed 
in.  There  is  no  penalty  that  I  will  not  gladly 
take,  if  I  will  thereby  save  my  child." 

'*God  so  loved  that  he  gave — ^ave  His  only 
begotten  Son." 

And  yet  once  again,  and  third :  God's  love  is 
victorious.  The  thing  worth  loving,  the  thing 
worth  doing,  that  thing  should  be  done;  that 
thing  shall  live;  that  thing  shall  not  perish  but 
have  everlasting  life.  If  there  is  anything  in  me 
that  is  worth  keeping  alive  after  this  life  is  over, 
alive  it  shall  be  kept.  If  there  is  not  anything  in 
me  worth  keeping  alive,  let  it  die.  Who  wants 
to  keep  it  alive?  I  don't.  But  mark  you,  my 
friends.  The  thing  about  love  is  just  this :  Love 
doesn't  create  value,  hut  it  discovers  value.  What 
do  I  mean?  I  mean  just  this.  If  you  really 
care  for  any  person,  first  when  you  meet  them, 
perhaps  they  are  very  ordinary  folk  to  you.    As 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  69 

you  meet  a^ain,  your  interest  is  aroused,  and  you 
see  things  you  didn't  see  before.  As  friendship 
g^rows,  all  sorts  of  things  arise  before  your  eye, 
<And  you  gradually  become  assured  of  their  value. 
As  intimacy  follows,  a  strange  thing  has  taken 
place — the  person  you  first  passed  on  the  street, 
or  scarcely  cared  to  nod  to,  has  become  almost 
essential  to  you.  Why  is  all  this?  Is  there 
something  there  that  never  was  there  before? 
Not  at  all.  It  is  only  that  love  has  discovered 
value,  and  in  its  discovery  knows  full  well  that 
it  lives  in  the  assurance  that  to-morrow  more 
value  will  be  discovered.  We  never  exaggerate 
the  value  of  anyone.  With  our  best  seeing,  best 
loving,  we  only  discover  part  of  the  value. 

So  Jesus,  the  man  of  love,  comes  to  walk 
among  us,  and  to  declare  the  value  of  the  thing 
he  loves;  the  value  of  the  commonplace  thing, 
the  every-day  man  and  woman,  the  plain  little 
street-child;  the  value  of  all  these  to  God  him- 
self, the  God  who,  in  the  last  resort,  is  respon- 
sible for  it  all.  Yes,  this  is  the  third  great  prin- 
ciple of  the  gospel.  The  gospel  stamps  life's 
loveliness  with  God's  assurance  of  permanence. 
The  old  gospel  whispers  to  us,  sings  to  us,  shouts 
to  us,  that  what  was  beautiful  and  worthy  in  life 
cannot  die;  that  which  belongs  to  Jesus,  appre- 
ciates Him,  falls  towards  Him,  stumbles,  stag- 
gers after  Him,  cannot  die,  for  everlasting  life 
is  not  based  on  the  attainments  of  men,  but  on 
the  character  of  Almighty  God  Himself.  That's 
the  gospel. 


70  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

God's  love  made  the  world.  God's  love  suf- 
fers with  the  world.  God's  love  is  victorious  in 
the  world. 

What  about  the  gospel  of  pardon,  the  removal 
of  sin?  , 

First,  I  want  to  say  to  you  that  it  is  quite  im- 
possible for  me  to-day  more  than  to  touch  here 
and  there  this  great  question  of  man's  salvation 
from  sin.  I  do  not  claim  to  put  before  you  any- 
thing like  a  complete  statement  of  the  nature  of 
it,  or  the  method  of  it.  I  can  only,  in  the  time 
allotted  to  me,  point  out  here  and  there  things 
about  it  that  I  think  I  can  see  somewhat  clearly, 
and  that  I  hope  may  be  helpful  to  you ;  thoughts 
that  may  perhaps  suggest  other  thoughts  of  your 
own  that  shall  go  much  deeper  and  further  than 
mine. 

Again,  I  would  say  quite  frankly  that  I  think 
we  have  been  accustomed  to  treat  sin  in  too 
academic  a  way.  We  have  not  been  quite  honest 
about  it.  We  have  talked  about  sin  more  than 
we  meant.  We  protested  too  much,  and  said 
things  we  didn't  feel,  or  only  felt  when  we  were 
smitten  with  some  misfortune,  or  were  sick  in 
body  or  depressed  in  mind. 

I  remember  an  incident  of  long  ago  in  college. 
It  made  a  great  impression  on  me.  An  excellent 
man  came  down  to  Cambridge  in  the  old  land,  to 
preach  to  us  undergraduates.  He  was  a  holy 
man  and  courageous.  He  lived  only  to  preach 
the  gospel,  as  he  saw  it,  but  his  views  of  men 
and  things  were  sombre,  and,  as  I  look  back  on 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  7^ 

it  all  now,  I  see  that  he  was  deeply  tinned  with 
the  Puritan  spirit,  that  always  tries  to  category 
things  in  God's  world  as  right  and  wrong.  Well, 
he  preached  to  us  lads  about  conversion,  and 
told  us  that  conversion  meant  turning  away  for- 
ever from  a  great  many  things  that  we  dearly 
liked.  It  was  true,  we  had  been  told  by  our 
parents  that  we  oughtn't  to  like  them,  that  they 
were  of  the  world,  and  that  to  be  true  Christians 
we  ought  to  give  them  up.  But  our  instincts 
never  quite  tallied  with  this  teaching.  Certainly 
it  didn't  in  the  case  of  the  boy  I  now  speak  of. 
He  was  a  first-rate  fellow,  lived  soberly  and  tried 
to  do  the  best  he  could.  He  was  much  affected 
by  the  appeals  of  the  preacher,  and  remained 
after  many  of  the  discourses  for  private  conver- 
sation, as  indeed  many  of  us  did.  At  last, 
towards  the  close  of  the  services,  the  preacher 
urged  on  this  lad  that  he  should  then  and  there 
renounce  the  world,  and  take  his  stand  as  a 
Christian.  "Will  you,"  said  the  good  man,  '*0h, 
will  you  be  converted  now?"  "Oh,  yes,"  said 
the  youth.  "I  would  like  to  be  converted,  sir, 
but  I  don't  think  I  would  like  to  be  converted  in 
the  May  term." 

Now,  this  was  what  I  call  unhealthy  treatment 
of  sin.  There  are  sins  enough,  God  knows,  in 
the  world,  without  our  creating  new  ones  by  our 
fancy.  The  path  of  life  is  narrow  and  steep 
enough  for  the  man  who  is  going  to  do  right, 
without  making  it  narrower  and  steeper  and 
more  difificult  than  need  be. 


72  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

Now,  what  I  really  wanted  to  do  for  myself 
is  to  try  and  see  how  Jesus  looked  at  sin,  what 
it  meant  to  Him,  and  He,  surely,  had  more  to 
do  with  it  than  anybody  else.  The  first  thing  I 
notice  is,  that  he  took  a  totally  different  view  of 
sin  from  what  the  Jews  of  His  time  did.  He 
found  a  definite — a  very  definite— doctrine  of 
sin  when  he  came.  It  was  prevalent  everywhere. 
Both  by  His  teaching  and  practice.  He  declared 
that  doctrine  to  be  wrong,  and  substituted  an- 
other in  its  place.  The  Jews  re^^arded  disease  as 
a  sin,  and  it  awakened  their  wrath.  Jesus  re- 
garded sin  as  a  disease,  and  it  inspired  his  pity. 

Let  me  illustrate.  Here  was  a  blind  man. 
The  natural  question  that  arose  to  the  minds  of 
the  disciples,  after  they  have  been  even  years 
with  Jesus,  when  they  see  the  blind  man  is, 
''Master,  who  did  sin?  This  man  or  his  parents, 
that  he  was  born  blind?"  Jesus  answered: 
^'Neither  this  man  sinned  nor  his  parents."  They 
meet  a  leper.  The  leper's  status  is  already  set- 
tled. He  is  not  only  physically  unclean,  he  is 
morally  unclean.  They  meet  a  crazy  man  or  an 
epileptic.  The  question  is  past  argument;  all 
believe  he  is  inhabited  by  the  devil.  Lunacy  is 
a  wickedness.  For  that  matter,  people  believed 
this  but  a  short  time  ago.  Witchcraft  was  traffic 
with  Satan,  and  was  to  be  cured  by  the  ducking- 
stool  or  the  bonfire.  Our  point  of  view  was  not 
so  very  far  from  theirs.  Now  Jesus  comes  as 
the  great  Physician  for  sinners.  He  will  not  be 
a  judge.     He  never  used  His  power  to  punish 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  73 

sin.  His  disciples  want  Him  to  call  down  the 
fire  from  Heaven.  He  rebukes  them.  "You 
don't  know  what  your  spirit  is,"  He  says.  Up 
to  the  very  last  they  expect  Him  to  use  His 
power  against  His  enemies.  They  have  learned 
very  little  from  following  Him  round,  and  lis- 
tening to  Him  speak.  He  will  not  condemn  His 
enemies,  not  even  His  murderers,  and  He  dies, 
praying  for  their  excuse.  ''The  Lord  hath  sent 
Me  to  bind  up  the  broken-hearted,  declare  liberty 
to  the  captives,  sig^ht  to  the  blind,  to  set  at  lib- 
erty those  that  are  bound,  to  proclaim  the  accept- 
able year  of  the  Lord,  not  the  day  of  vengeance 
of  our  God."  He  never  threatened.  Often  he 
did  warn,  but  that  is  a  very  different  thing-.  But 
the  trouble  was  that  when  Christianity  fell  on 
the  Roman  world,  the  Roman  spirit,  iron-bound 
and  legal,  could  not  yet  yield  to  the  gentleness 
of  the  spirit  of  Jesus;  the  vast  lump  was  too 
heavy,  too  stolid,  to  be  leavened  quickly,  and  the 
merciful  teachings  were  thrust  aside,  and  the  old 
spirit  of  legalism  revived  under  the  Roman 
forms  of  government.  God  was  a  judge ;  Jesus 
was  made  what  he  protested  he  never  was — a 
judge;  and  the  gentle  Mary  had  to  be  invoked 
and  all  the  vast  host  of  saints,  to  give  some  small 
modicum  of  hope  to  men.  I  say  he  warned,  he 
did  not  threaten.  There  are  laws  of  body  and 
mind,  spiritual,  physical,  which  cannot  be  dis- 
regarded. Ignore  these,  and  your  bodies  and 
souls  will  become  offal,  fit  only  for  the  place 
where    offal    is    consumed.      This    he    taught. 


74  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

There  is  no  final  room  in  the  universe  under  the 
laws  of  God  for  the  monstrous  and  for  the  ab- 
normal, and  the  monstrous  and  the  abnormal 
must  perish.  This  he  taught.  Men  who  grow 
careless  and  unsympathetic,  who  care  not  for  the 
hungry,  the  naked  and  the  suffering;  women 
who  make  pleasure  the  end,  instead  of  a  recrea- 
tion— for  all  these  life  down  here  has  failed.  The 
redemptive  influence  of  ''this  earthly"  order  has 
been  wasted  on  them.  If  they  are  to  be  saved 
at  all,  they  will  go  into  future  discipline.  This 
he  taught.  This  is  not  threatening — ^this  is 
warning. 

Now  first  I  have  said,  Jesus  is  the  physician 
for  sin  and  not  the  judge  of  sinners. 

Next,  he  warns  sinners,  doesn't  threaten 
them. 

Third,  Jesus  never  demanded  sacrifice  for 
sin.  He  never  said  He  was  a  ransom  paid  to 
God  for  sin.  What  He  did  say  was  that  the 
Father  loved  His  children,  and  He  came  to  tell 
them  of  that  love.  He  never  said  God  was  a 
changeable  God.  He  said  that  nothing  we  could 
do  could  change  Him  toward  us*.  How  could 
He  so  change,  and  yet  be  God?  He  came  to 
commend  God's  love  to  us.  He  came  to  recon- 
cile us  to  God.  Of  course,  the  old  Jewish  idea 
of  sacrifice  was  far  from  dead;  that  idea  of 
sacrifice  was  built  up  through  a  period  of  a 
thousand  years ;  grew  as  all  systems  must  grow, 
more  elaborate  and  less  vital  as  they  get  older. 
It  began  with  the  small,  free-will  offering  of 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  75 

Leviticus,  1-3,  when  each  man  brought  his  cow 
or  his  goat,  or  his  pigeon,  or  his  handful  of 
grain,  as  the  case  might  be,  the  best  he  had, 
and  it  was  acceptable  because  it  was  his  free-will 
offering.  This  was  the  simple  beginning  of 
sacrifice,  but  it  grew  into  an  enormous  elabora- 
tion— a  god-hiding,  man-destroying  ritual,  until 
against  it  the  fiery  appeal  of  the  Great  Prophet 
had  to  be  hurled. 

"To  what  purpose  is  the  multitude  of  your 
sacrifices  unto  me  ?  saith  the  Lord :  I  am  full 
of  the  burnt  offerings  of  rams,  and  the  fat  of 
fed  beasts;  and  I  delight  not  in  the  blood  of 
bullocks ;  or  of  lambs,  or  of  he  goats. 

"When  ye  come  to  appear  before  me,  who 
hath  required  this  at  your  hand,  to  tread  my 
courts  ? 

"Bring  no  more  vain  oblations;  incense  is  an 
abomination  to  me;  the  new  moons  and  sab- 
baths, the  callings  of  assemblies,  I  cannot  away 
with ;  it  is  iniquity,  even  the  solemn  meeting. 

"Your  new  moons  and  your  appointed  feasts 
my  soul  hateth;  they  are  a  trouble  unto  me;  I 
am  weary  to  bear  them. 

"And  when  ye  spread  forth  your  hands,  I 
will  hide  mine  eyes  from  you;  yea,  when  ye 
make  many  prayers,  I  will  not  hear ;  your  hands 
are  full  of  blood. 

"Wash  ye,  make  you  clean;  put  away  the 
evil  of  your  doings  from  before  mine  eyes; 
cease  to  do  evil. 

"Learn  to  do  well ;  seek  judgment,   relieve 


76  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

the  oppressed,  jud^e  the  fatherless,  plead  for 
the  widow. 

"Come,  now,  and  let  us  reason  together,  saith 
the  Lord :  though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they 
shall  be  white  as  snow;  though  they  be  red  like 
crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool. 

"If  ye  be  willing  and  obedient,  ye  shall  eat 
the  good  of  the  land." — Isaiah  i :  11-19. 

Sacrifices  and  offering  thou  wouldest  not,  but 
a  body  hast  thou  prepared  me. 

Ah,  the  Church  has  forgotten  all  this  too 
often,  and  has  fallen  into  the  perpetual  mistake 
of  making  the  Saviour's  work  the  condition  of 
man's  forgiveness,  something  interposing  be- 
tween God  and  man,  some  innocent  and  holy 
thing  stepping  in  and  taking  the  blow  aimed  at 
man ;  and  thus  man  is  only  converted  at  the  cost 
of  the  degradation  of  the  idea  of  God.  Jesus 
offers  the  goodness  and  mercy  of  God  to  men 
without  conditions.  He  doesn't  come  to  men 
because  repentant  men  call  Him,  but  He  comes 
to  them  because  He  is  goodness,  mercy,  love — 
because  He  is  God  manifest  in  human  flesh — 
and  when  He  has  come,  they  repent.  We  have 
reversed  all  this.  We  have  said,  "Repent,  and 
God  will  come  to  you."  Jesus  said,  "God  is 
good;  therefore  repent."  Jesus  doesn't  say  to 
Zaccheus,  "Zaccheus,  will  you  make  restitution? 
If  you  do,  I  will  come  to  you."  But  He  says : 
"Zaccheus,  I  want  to  come  to  your  house."  And 
when  Zaccheus,  all  amazed  with  the  beauty  of 
his  condescension,  is  smitten  to  the  heart,  it  is 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  77 

easy  for  him  to  say,  ''The  half  of  my  goods  I 
will  give  tO'  the  poor,  and  if  I  have  taken  any- 
thing from  men  by  false  accusation,  I  will 
restore  it  fourfold."  Jesus  came  first,  and  then 
came  repentance.  And  so  it  runs  along :  "Love 
your  enemies,  bless  them  that  persecute  you, 
that  you  may  be  dear  children  of  your  Father 
which  is  in  Heaven,  because  He  maketh  His 
sun  to  shine  upon  the  evil  and  the  good,  and 
sendeth  His  rain  upon  the  just  and  the  unjust.'* 
By  love  God  leads  us  to  repentance.  Christ 
didn't  wait  for  men  to  come  to  Him.  He  came 
to  them;  didn't  wait  for  them  to  love  Him;  He 
first  loved  them.  The  gospel  is  the  presentation 
of  God  to  us  by  Jesus,  not  that  we  loved  Him, 
but  that  He  first  loved  us.  He  would  not  be 
God,  true  tO'  His  own  godhead,  if  He  did  not 
forgive.  Paul  is  quite  plain  about  this.  "God 
who  is  rich  in  mercy,  for  His  great  love  where- 
with He  loved  us,  even  when  we  were  dead  in 
sin."  Or  take,  lastly,  the  greatest  declaration  of 
all.  It  was  the  remembrance  that  He  had  a 
Father,  that  He  had  a  home,  that  the  foulness 
of  the  far  country  could  not  make  these  any  less 
real,  that  all  the  wrong  he  had  done,  and  the 
pain  he  had  caused,  and  the  waste  of  his  life, 
and  the  meanness  of  it  all — that  none  of  these, 
or  all  of  these  together,  could  rob  him  of  his 
right  to  Sonship.  It  was  this  that  made  the 
boy  at  last  rise  up,  and,  in  the  distant  lands  of 
sin's  exile,  say,  "I  will,  I  will  arise  and  go  unto 
my  Father."     Thus    it    was    that  Jesus  came 


78  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

among-  men.  Is  there  a  blind  man  doomed  to 
darkness?  He  doesn't  say  to  him,  "Will  you 
be  good  if  I  give  you  sight?"  He  makes  no 
condition.  Is  there  an  impotent  man  that  has 
waited  for  weary  years  for  what  he  believes  to 
be  an  angel  visit  ?  He  heals  him  first,  and  then 
says,  ''Sin  no  more,  lest  worse  things  come  to 
thee."  Is  it  a  poor,  sick  woman  worn  with  long 
weakness?  She  wants  to  touch  him,  she  has 
faith — maybe  a  low  sort  of  faith  only,  the  low 
spirit  of  faith  that  leans  on  the  wandering, 
magical  sort  of  man ;  yet  all  the  multitudes  must 
make  way  for  that  feeble  finger  touch.  Is  it  a 
little  child  that  the  mother  wants  to  feel  His 
hand?  He  takes  the  little  one  on  his  knee  and 
says,  "All  may  so  come.  Nay,  all  must  so 
come,  if  they  are  to  come  to  me  and  to  God  at 
all." 

This  is  the  attitude  of  Jesus.  What  is  the 
attitude  of  the  Church  ?  We  bring  little  children 
to  the  Church  to-day.  Has  this  child  been 
baptized  or  no?  No.  Well,  then,  we  receive 
this  child  as  Jesus  said  we  should  receive  all 
children.  "Suffer  them  to  come  to  me  and 
forbid  them  not,"  and  yet  before  they  come,  I 
want  to  ask  three  questions.  Nay,  before  you 
bring  this  child,  you  must  promise  three  things 
in  its  name:  You  must  renounce  the  devil  and 
all  his  works,  the  vain  pomp  and  glory  of  the 
world,  with  all  covetous  desires  of  the  same  and 
the  sinful  desires  of  the  flesh,  so  that  thou  wilt 
not  follow,  nor  be  led  by  them. 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  79 

2.  You  must  believe  all  the  articles  of  the 
Christian  Faith,  as  contained  in  the  Apostles' 
Creed. 

3.  You  must  obediently  keep  God's  holy  will 
and  commandments,  and  walk  in  the  same  all 
the  days  of  your  life. 

Tremendous  pledges,  these.  I  don't  want  to 
say  anything  to  belittle  them;  but  have  we  put 
them  in  the  rig-ht  place?  Are  we  right  in 
making  them  conditions  to  baptism?  Can  any 
one  in  his  senses  conceive  of  Jesus  saying,  **I 
cannot  receive  this  little  child  until  you  have 
promised  and  vowed  these  things  in  its  name!" 
Or  can  anyone  conceive  of  Jesus  receiving  a 
little  child,  and  then  saying  he  would  not  let 
the  disciples  baptize  it  ?  I  don't  believe  in  need- 
lessly arguing  with  the  great  past,  but  I  do  say 
that  we  must  break  even  through  the  past,  if 
it  is  separating  us  from  the  essence  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  life  of  Jesus.  And  furthermore,  I 
believe,  in  her  better  mood,  the  Church  always 
knew  this,  for  she  especially  ordained  that  under 
circumstances  of  stress  and  danger,  all  children 
may  be  baptized  without  question  or  answer,  and 
that  lay  baptism  itself,  when  in  the  name  of  the 
Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost  is  as  thoroughly 
valid  baptism  as  when  performed  by  the  highest 
Bishop  in  the  Church. 

But  I  must  not  further  digress  from  the  main 
point  I  have  before  me.  I  want  in  conclusion 
to  say  this  to  you :  that  all  thoughtful  people  to- 
day ought  to  admit  that  a  new  light,  a  very 


8o  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

^reat  new  li^ht,  has  been  poured  on  this  whole 
question  of  sin  by  the  new  knowledge  that  has 
come  to  men  in  the  last  fifty  years.  We  know 
now  that  human  life  is  an  emergence  from  the 
order  of  the  mere  animal  to  the  order  of  man, 
and  that  Christians  venture  to  believe  what  we 
cannot  yet  prove — a  further  emergence  from  the 
order  of  man  to  the  order  of  the  God-man. 

Once  upon  a  time  in  this  world  there  was  no 
such  thing  as  man.  Life  was  unmoral.  Morality 
could  not  exist  until  the  time  of  choice  between 
good  and  evil  had  arrived,  and  the  beasts  had 
no  choice.  It  is  no  sin  for  a  monkey  to  try  and 
grab  the  biggest  cocoanut  and  prevent  any  other 
monkey  taking  it.  The  shark  as  he  ravages 
the  sea  sins  not,  nor  does  the  peacock  as  he 
spreads  his  tail,  nor  the  tiger  as  he  gluts  his 
craving  for  blood.  Remnants  of  the  fish  and 
the  tiger  and  the  peacock  we  have  in  us.  What 
is  the  use  of  ignoring  or  denying  it?  But 
mounting  up  above  these,  and  knowing  he  does 
wrong  if  he  doesn't  mount  above  these,  ever 
rises  the  man. 

The  doctors  say  that  in  our  bodies  are  hun- 
dreds of  vestigia.  Vestigia  are  relics  of  organs 
that  once  were  useful  and  are  useful  no  longer. 
Very  often  they  are  dangers,  positive  threats, 
to  health,  and  the  surgeon's  knife  removes  them 
when  it  can.  Sins  are  vestigia — things  that 
hang  to  us  from  the  old  past,  and  are  slowly 
worked  off  and  can  be  worked  down.  Sins  are 
like  the  old  leaves  that  cling  to  the  tree,  and 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  8i 

even  the  winter  storms  and  the  cruel  frost  won't 
bear  them  away.  They  have  to  ^o,  but  nothing 
will  carry  them  off  finally  but  the  springing-  life 
within.  Freedom  from  the  peacock,  the  shark, 
the  tiger,  the  ape,  we  shall  have.  The  struggle 
from  lower  to  higher  we  shall  win.  It  is  God's 
method  of  making  us  strong.  Only  by  long 
persistence  do  we  win  soul  vigor.  He  is  with 
us  in  the  struggle  from  beginning  to  end.  He 
put  us  to  the  struggle ;  He  is  responsible  for  the 
stru^^le;  He  ordained  the  struggle^ — ordained 
the  very  conditions  of  it.  And  thus,  with  a  tre- 
mendous assurance,  those  that  understood  Christ 
could  proclaim  the  reality  of  God's  help  and  for- 
giveness for  men,  forgiveness  of  the  past,  free- 
dom from  the  animal ;  more  sail,  less  lead ;  more 
soul,  less  tiger ;  more  man,  less  ape.  God  made 
the  order  of  the  past,  and  within  that  order  God 
put  man's  soul.  He  knew  what  he  did.  "He 
knoweth  what  he  doeth."  Therefore,  "I  am 
weary  of  my  sickness;  I  would  fain  be  where 
they  shall  die  no  more,  and  with  the  company 
that  perpetually  cry,  'Holy,  Holy,  Holy !'  "  No. 
There  is  God's  right  to  deliver  me  from  all  that 
keeps  me  back  from  that  great  day.  Socrates 
long  ago  said,  ''God  might  forgive  sin,  but  He 
could  not  see  how  it  was  possible."  The  best 
poets  and  philosophers  have  taught  as  much  as 
that.  But  with  Jesus,  faith  had  won  its  assur- 
ance that  forgiveness  was  possible.  But  it  was 
more  than  possible,  for  God  was  bound  to  see 
us  through — not  only  merciful  (reverently  be  it 


82  The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon 

spoken),  but  faithful  and  just  "to  forgive  us  our 
sins  and  cleanse  us  from  all  unrighteousness." 

Let  us  go  forth,  young  men,  into  God's 
world.  Remember  it  is  a  love  w^orld.  Love 
planned  it,  love  is  in  it  from  beginning  to  end. 
Love  will  see  it  through.  Not  an  easy  thing  to 
believe  always,  but  you  try  to  believe  it.  As  you 
go  forth  among  men  and  gaze  on  misery  and 
wrong,  sorrow  and  injustice,  things  that  still 
abound  everywhere,  remember  as  you  look  over 
the  sadness  of  it  all,  that  these  are  the  results  of 
evil  will,  the  results  of  what  man's  sin  can  ac- 
complish within  a  brief  space  of  three-score 
years  and  ten.  If  evil  powers  within  and  around 
us  can  accomplish  so  much  to  blight  and  to  blast, 
oh,  remember,  these  are  but  the  brief  possibilities 
of  an  hour;  what  are  they  in  comparison  with 
the  everlasting  powers  of  right,  of  love,  of  wis- 
dom, of  God.  I  look  around,  and  I  see  what 
one  evil  man  can  do.  But  I  want  to  lift  my 
eyes  to  the  hills  from  whence  cometh  my  help, 
and  to  remember  that  if  the  transient  will  of  an 
hour  can  do  harm,  what  can  eternal  will,  al- 
mighty power,  everlasting  righteousness,  un- 
changing love,  accomplish  ?  As  Paul  put  it  long 
ago — no  words  of  inspired  men  will  ever  state  it 
more  gloriously — "Where  sin  abounds,  the  grace 
of  God  shall  much  more  abound."  For  we  can 
never  dream  of  forgiveness  and  salvation  as 
complete  as  Jesus  Christ  has  proclaimed. 


The  Gospel  of  God's  Pardon  83 

There  is  grace  enough  for  thousands  of  new  worlds  as 

great  as  this, 
There  is  joy  for  fresh  creations  in  that  upper  home  of 

bliss ; 
There  is  plentiful  redemption  in  the  blood  that  has  been 

shed. 
There  is  joy  for  all  the  members  m  the  sorrows  of  the 

Head, 
For  the  love  of  God  is  broader  than  the  measure  of 

man's  mind, 
And  the  heart  of  the  Eternal  is  most  wonderfully  kind. 


Christianity  and  Education. 


"Other  foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid, 
which  is  Jesus  Christ." — i  Cor.  III.  :ii. 

Paul,  the  Apostle,  writing  from  Ephesus  to 
the  Corinthian  Christians,  compares  the  growth 
of  the  Soul  to  one  of  their  own  beautiful  build- 
ings, and  says  that  the  superstructures  may  vary 
with  the  character,  temperament,  conditions  and 
circumstances  of  the  individual  builder;  may  be 
wood,  hay,  stubble,  gold,  or  silver ;  but  one  thing 
is  certain,  fixed,  unalterable,  ''Other  foundation 
can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus 
Christ."  This  is  true  for  the  Soul  of  man,  for 
his  active  life  here  and  hereafter,  for  his  pro- 
gress, his  civilization,  his  government,  laws, 
institutions — for  all  that  goes  to  make  up  the 
larger  hope  or  wider  destiny  of  mankind  now 
and  forever. 

The  process  of  creation  culminates  in  man; 
for  with  man  begins  the  new  spiritual  order, 
which  interprets  and  fulfils  all  life.  It  is  destined 
to  fill  the  Universe  and  outlive  time.  At  the 
basis  of  it, — its  law,  its  motive,  its  inspiration, 
— is  a  great  act  of  sacrifice,  an  act  of  love,  the 
love  of  God  the  Father  in  his  only  Begotten 
Son, — that  all  that  is  in  man  and  that  shall  grow 
out  of    man    for    the    Universe    and    through 


86  Christianity  and  Education 

Eternity,  may  be  built  up,  may  be  perfected, 
completed,  saved. 

We  cannot  improve  to-day  upon  the  wonder- 
ful truth  given  to  the  Wise  Master  Builder. 
The  experience  of  the  ages  has  only  reinforced 
his  judgment.  The  progress  of  civilization,  the 
whole  historic  record  of  man's  onward  march 
but  strengthens,  deepens,  enlarges  the  conviction 
that  "Other  foundation  can  no  man  lay  than 
that  is  laid,  which  is  Jesus  Christ." 

I  want  to  say  something  about  Christianity 
and  Education.  It  is  an  old  subject,  a  large 
subject,  a  most  important  subject,  naturally 
suggested  by  such  an  Institution  as  the  Baldwin 
Foundation.  It  is  a  subject  moreover  very 
directly  and  explicitly  included  in  the  text, 
which  I  have  chosen  from  St.  Paul,  involving, 
when  we  examine  it  closely,  the  whole  meaning, 
value  and  significance  of  Christianity  in  the 
world. 

For,  after  all,  what  do  we  mean  by  education  ? 
Certainly  not  the  weak,  impoverished  idea  of 
special  training  of  men  and  women  for  the 
duties  of  a  trade  or  a  profession;  not  the  mere 
cram  of  names  and  dates  and  facts.  It  is  a  com- 
monplace nowadays  to  say  that  education  is  a 
process,  a  development,  an  evolution  of  power 
from  within.  And  if  there  be  no  power  within, 
all  the  education  in  the  world  will  not  create 
it.  There  is  a  learning  that  is  useless,  cumber- 
some, undigested.    So,  in  a  real  sense — 


Christianity  and  Education  87 

"Truth  is  within  ourselves.  *     *     * 
There  is  an  inmost  center  in  us  all, 
Where  truth  abides  in  fullness,  and  around, 
Wall  upon  wall,  the  gross  flesh  hems  it  in, 
This  perfect,  clear  perception,  which  is  truth, 
A  baffling  and  perverting  carnal  mesh 
Blinds  it  and  makes  all  error;  and  to  know 
Rather  consists  in  opening  out  a  way 
Whence  the  imprisoned  splendor  may  escape." 

"And  men  have  oft  grown  old  among  their  books, 
To  die  case-hardened  in  their  ignorance." 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  not  forget,  that, 
if  the  mere  utilitarian  and  objective  theory  of 
education  has  been  discredited,  the  whole  world 
has  condemned  the  crude  guess-work  of  Rous- 
seau :  that  man  in  a  state  of  nature,  without 
science,  without  revelation,  without  civilization, 
is  at  his  best. 

We  say,  then,  that  education  is  twofold,  both 
drawing  something  out  and  putting  something 
in.  He  is  a  simpleton,  who  thinks  nothing,  but 
what  he  reads,  and  he  is  a  greater  simpleton, 
who,  in  the  solution  of  life's  problems,  refuses 
to  take  advantage  of  the  thought  and  experience 
that  past  ages  have  to  offer. 

What  is  education?  Why,  it  is  the  prepara- 
tion of  men  and  women  to  take  their  places  in 
the  world.  It  is,  as  a  great  scholar  has  said, 
the  supervision,  the  direction  of  the  change,  the 
great  change  that  is  taking  place  all  around  us, 
whereby  our  boys  and  girls  are  getting  ready 
to  take  our  places,  to  assume  our  responsibilities, 
to  discharge  the  duties   that    we    discharge,  in 


88  Christianity  and  Education 

Society,  Government  and  religion.  And  for  the 
manner  and  character  of  that  change,  its  good- 
ness or  its  evil,  its  success  or  failure,  you  and 
I  are  responsible.  Thus  one  generation  may  be 
made  or  marred  by  that  which  precedes  it;  and 
upon  the  truth,  the  wisdom,  the  carefulness  of 
the  methods  of  education,  which  prevail  in  this 
country  to-day,  the  future  of  our  institutions, 
of  our  religion,  of  our  American  Government, 
Society  and  Civilization  will  inevitably  depend. 
If  there  is  anything  precious  to  us  in  the  political 
heritage  of  our  fathers;  anything  sacred  in  the 
ideals  of  our  social  life;  anything  holy  and  true 
in  the  blessings  of  our  religion — then  this  sub- 
ject is  of  vast  importance  to  every  one  of  us: 
then  to  Christian  men,  the  Church  of  God  indif- 
ferent to  education  is  a  contradiction  in  terms 
— for  the  Church  is  nothing  if  it  be  not  the 
school  of  Christ,  and  the  Gospel  is  unintelligible 
except  as  being  in  its  deepest,  truest,  widest 
sense,  a  means  and  method  of  education.  "Other 
foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid, 
which  is  Jesus  Christ." 

There  are,  it  seems  to  me,  certain  great  and 
pregnant  facts  that  have  to  be  taken  into  con- 
sideration in  any  true  theory  of  education; 
certain  facts  without  which  education  is  deprived 
of  its  only  adequate  justification  and  stripped  of 
half  its  meaning  and  value. 

And  the  first  of  these  is  man's  spiritual  nature 
and  man's  immortal  life.  If  man  is  a  brute,  or  a 
brute  adorned  with  discussive  reason  and  only 


Christianity  and  Education  89 

that,  then  he  is  a  failure,  his  life  is  a  burden, 
his  knowledge  is  guess  work,  his  achievements 
here  are  of  little  account  or  meaning.  There 
is  no  guarantee  of  the  truth  of  his  moral  or 
spiritual  judgments;  there  is  no  proof  of  the 
validity  of  his  intellectual  processes,  and  his 
education  is  for  the  most  part  a  waste  of  time. 
But  if  man  is  a  spiritual  being, — if  he  is 
immortal, — ^if  the  culture,  the  growth,  the 
development  of  soul  accomplished  here,  have 
value  and  significance  forever ;  if  this  life  be  the 
opportunity  for  the  exercise  and  the  evolution 
in  us  of  capacities,  powers,  faculties  which 
eternity  is  to  complete  and  satisfy — then  every 
school  is  sacred  and  every  path  of  knowledge 
is  holy  ground.  I  believe  in  education,  in  higher 
education,  because  I  believe  in  man's  spiritual 
and  immortal  life,  and  any  theory,  any  scheme, 
any  method  of  education  that  ignores  this  fact 
of  human  nature,  is  unscientific  in  the  first  place, 
because  it  arbitrarily  excludes  a  fact  that  is 
practically  admitted,  in  one  form  or  another,  by 
the  entire  human  race;  and  it  is  one-sided, 
poverty-stricken,  superficial,  because  it  trys  to 
make  a  whole  man  by  developing  two-thirds  of 
him.  Of  all  the  extraordinary  contradictions 
in  the  world  nothing  could  be  more  extra- 
ordinary than  this :  the  attempt  to  make  a  man 
out  of  body  and  mind,  with  no  provision  for  the 
soul's  growth,  and  thus  to  deny  the  religious 
experience  of  mankind,  and  call  this  attempt 
education. 


90  Christianity  and  Education 

There  is  another  fact  that  education  must 
recognize.  Education  must  have  its  model,  its 
ideal.  There  must  be  some  goal  towards  which 
it  shall  be  definitely  directed.  And  as  I  believe 
in  man's  spiritual  nature  and  man's  immortal 
life,  and  just  in  proportion  as  I  believe  in  man's 
high  destiny,  in  man's  divine  potentiality,  so 
must  I  believe  that  the  end,  the  purpose,  the 
object  of  all  his  striving,  his  development  is 
God.  My  Brothers :  We  do  not  always  realize, 
we  do  not  stop  to  think,  that  there  is  a  profound 
and  eternal  significance  in  the  fact  of  man's 
desire  for  progress.  And  yet  what  human 
characteristic  is  there  revealed  in  all  the  cen- 
turies, so  clearly  defined,  so  inevitable,  so 
insatiable,  as  this  hunger  and  thirst  for  growth, 
for  improvement,  for  change.  Man  stands  to- 
day, after  one  hundred  generations  of  effort,  on 
the  outskirts  of  the  woodland,  on  the  margin 
of  the  Sea  of  knowledge,  and  yet  he  is  not 
weary,  he  is  not  tired.  The  great  Scientist 
assures  us  that  two  billion  years  would  not  be 
sufficient  to  reach  the  conclusions  which  we 
want  to  reach,  and  the  results  we  would  like  to 
find  in  some  departments  of  Mathematics  alone. 
And  yet  we  do  not  abandon  hope — we  are  eager 
to  go  on.  The  very  instinct  of  life  is  the  instinct 
to  keep  on,  to  advance,  to  increase  in  knowledge 
and  in  power.  For  man  as  man  there  is  no 
rest  here.  Education,  Schools,  Colleges,  Uni- 
versities— what  are  they  but  the  signs  and 
symptoms  of  man's  untiring,  unending  yearning 
for  progress  and  self-development?    They  have 


Christianity  and  Education  9  ^ 

one  purpose,  one  end  and  satisfaction,  and  that 
is  God.  It  is  an  Apostle  who  bids  us  to  add 
to  Faith  Virtue,  and  to  Virtue  Knowledge; 
because  through  the  knowledge  of  God  we  are 
called  to  glory  and  Virtue,  that  we  may  become 
partakers  of  the  Divine  nature. 

But  who,  but  what  is  God?  Let  us  read  the 
Philosophers  and  analyze  their  arguments  about 
the  absolute,  the  unknowable,  the  Infinite  and 
Eternal  energy.  Let  us  ask  Nature  with  her 
inexorable  law,  sparing  none,  forgiving  none, 
cold,  and  hard,  and  pitiless  to  all,  who  and  what 
is  God?  Is  He  the  sum  total  of  Virtues  gen- 
erally admired  by  men,  raised  algebraically  to 
the  highest  power  ?  Is  he  a  great  guess  by  some 
Philosopher,  looking  for  a  First  Cause?  A 
stern,  inevitable,  unconscious  Energy  from 
which  or  whom  all  things  proceed?  A  veiled 
Tyrant,  ready  to  slay,  the  remorseless  Minister 
of  an  iron  law,  that  predestines  and  predeter- 
mines and  destroys  and  saves,  without  com- 
passion and  without  regret,  only  to  be  solicited, 
placated,  propitiated,  by  an  innocent  Sufferer? 
God  be  praised — He  is  none  of  these.  There 
is  an  answer,  which  reason  never  found  and 
Nature  never  gave.     It  has  changed  the  world. 

"Think  Ahib,  or  dost  thou  think, 

"The  all  great  were  the  all  loving,  too. 

"And  through  the  thunder  comes  a  human  voice, 

"Oh  heart  I  made,  a  heart  beats  here, 

"Oh  Face  I  fashioned,  see  it  in  myself. 

"Thou  hast  no  power,  nor  canst  conceive  of  mine, 

"But  love  I  gave  thee,  with  myself  to  love, 

"And  thou  must  love  Me,  who  hast  died  for  thee.* 


92  Christianity  and  Bdiication 

And  again: 

"The  acknowledgment  of  God  in  Christ  accepted  by  thy 

reason, 
"Solves  for  thee  all  problems  in  the  world  and  out  of  it 
"And  has  so  far  advanced  thee  to  be  wise." 

Brethren  :  I  know  who  and  what  God  is.  You 
know  who  and  what  God  is.  Man  knows  it, 
feels  it,  understands  it,  responds  to  it,  only  in 
Jesus  Christ.  "This  is  eternal  life  to  know 
Thee,  the  only  true  God  and  Jesus  Christ,  whom 
Thou  hast  sent." 

But  when  we  know  God,  and  not  until  then, 
education  becomes  a  real  thing,  a  definite  and 
reasonable  thing  and  therefore  a  scientific  thing. 
It  touches  the  moral  life.  Because  the  highest, 
noblest,  manliest  attribute  of  man  is  the  sense 
of  duty.  The  testimony  of  education  is  unani- 
mous in  this,  that  the  finest,  supremest  work  of 
education  is  the  cultivation  of  the  sense  of  duty. 
And  duty  becomes  real,  intelligible,  only  in  the 
consciousness  of  God.  For  if  the  sense  of  duty 
is  the  utilitarian  regard  for  the  most  generally 
received  opinion,  the  being  honest  because  it  is 
the  best  policy;  or  if  duty  is  the  obedience  to 
what  the  majority  of  men  have  come  to  regard 
as  the  highest  light  within  us — then  it  is  a  dim, 
uncertain  image,  which  soon  will  fade.  But  if 
duty  means  the  discharge  of  obligation,  the 
recognition  of  responsibility,  to  the  one  eternal 
God  and  Father,  by  beings  who  themselves  are 
free,    personal,    moral,    accountable, — then   we 


Christianity  and  Bducation  93 

stand  on  solid  ground — we  know  who  we  are 
and  who  He  is,  and  the  end,  the  purpose,  the 
meaning-  of  life  and  of  education  is  clear.  But 
human  nature  is  weak  and  stumbling;  is  erring, 
sick  and  full  of  sin.  Who  does  not  know  it? 
The  ideals  are  far  off.  These  standards  that 
we  dream  of,  these  planes  of  high  effort,  these 
wide  and  ample  theories  of  education  and  pro- 
gress, delight  the  mind,  but  we  say  they  are 
impracticable.  We  must  fall  back  to  the  lower 
level  of  average  life  and  not  hope  in  this  genera- 
tion, at  least,  to  mount  high.  In  fact,  this  is 
the  whole  difficulty  in  talking  about  the  soul  and 
its  training.  It  is  well  enough,  it  is  said,  for 
Poets  and  Preachers  to  write  about  it,  and  for 
our  hearts  to  respond  to  the  pictures  they  repre- 
sent ;  but  it  is  cold  matter-of-fact  experience  that 
human  nature  is  not  equal  to  it,  not  fit  for  it,  and 
is  only  tantalized  by  the  suggestion  of  it.  Ah. 
my  Brethren,  do  those  who  speak  thus  of  educa- 
tion, those  who  think  so  hopelessly — do  they 
know,  or  have  they  ever  heard  of  the  fact,  the 
great  fact,  the  tremendous  Christian  fact,  of  the 
Spirit  of  God — the  power  that  is  not  ourselves, 
to  straighten  out  the  tangled  threads  of  human 
doubt  and  faith,  to  kindle  the  smouldering 
hopes,  to  brace  and  forge  with  hammer  strokes 
the  moral  sense,  and  make  us  men — men  of 
power,  men  of  courage,  men  of  confidence  and 
zeal  for  God  and  righteousness? 

These  then  are  my  principles,  my  facts,  upon 
which  I  say  the  large,  true  view  and  theory  of 


94  Christianity  and  Education 

education  rests:  the  fact  of  man's  immortal 
destiny,  the  fact  of  God  in  Christ,  the  fact  of 
the  help  and  comfort  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  "Other 
foundation  can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid, 
which  is  Jesus  Christ." 

I  set  out  to  show  what  was  the  highest,  fairest 
view  of  education,  and  I  found  that  it  was 
Christian  education.  And  so  I  do  not  believe  in 
Christian  education,  because  it  is  Christian,  or 
because  the  Church  has  taught  it,  but  because 
I  claim  that  after  eighteen  centuries  of  trial  it 
has  been  found,  proved,  demonstrated  to  be  the 
best,  the  largest,  highest  ideal  of  education  the 
world  has  ever  seen.  These  three  facts,  which 
are  the  foundations  of  our  ideals  of  education, 
apply  to  the  least  as  to  the  greatest,  to  the  mind 
and  even  to  the  body  as  to  the  soul  of  man. 
They  apply  to  all  the  departments  of  human 
development  and  knowledge;  because  they  affect 
man  as  man,  whether  he  be  a  student,  who  is 
impressed  by  the  experiments  of  Chemistry,  or 
by  the  revelations  of  Geology,  or  by  the  wonders 
of  Astronomy,  or  by  the  laws  of  Language  and 
the  masterpieces  of  literature.  For  man,  as 
man,  independently  of  all  that  he  does  or 
knows,  or  hopes  to  do  and  know,  values  and 
appreciates  what  he  is  and  is  to  be.  And  these 
three  facts  that  I  have  made  and  we  have  found 
to  be  the  very  basis  and  vindication  of  the 
higher  view  of  education,  what  are  they? 
Why,  they  are  the  facts  of  the  Church's  Creed. 
I  believe  in  God  the  Father  and  the  forgive- 


Christianity  and  Education  95 

ness  of  sins.  I  believe  in  God  the  Son  and 
the  Resurrection  of  the  body.  I  beUeve  in  God 
the  Holy  Ghost  and  the  life  everlasting.  And 
(applying  these  really  and  practically  in  human 
life)  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church. 
That  is  the  Apostles'  Creed.  What  is  this  but 
the  illustration  of  the  fact  that  Christianity  has 
survived  the  changes  and  chances  of  human  his- 
tory, not  because  it  was  handed  down  to  us 
by  the  fathers,  but  because  it  was  true;  and 
that  the  Creed  is  held  by  the  Church  to-day 
not  because  she  received  it  and  it  is  printed 
in  her  Prayer  Book,  but  because  every  gener- 
ation of  Christians  have  found  by  experience 
and  trial  that  it  is  the  truth?  "Other  founda- 
tion can  no  man  lay  than  that  is  laid,  which 
is  Jesus  Christ." 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Christian  ideal  of 
education  has  been  accepted  and  endorsed  by 
the  civilized  world.  The  three  facts  that  I 
have  claimed  as  Christian  facts  are  to-day,  in 
one  way  or  another,  taken  for  granted  in  every 
system  of  education  that  obtains  among  the 
leading  races  of  mankind.  Even  our  Public 
Schools,  in  which  theoretically  no  religion  is 
permitted  to  be  taught,  are  in  the  care  of 
teachers,  who,  as  a  class,  have  their  minds  per- 
vaded by  these  principles,  and  who  can  never 
touch  a  moral  question  in  the  school-room  with- 
out assuming,  to  some  degree,  the  great  facts 
upon  which  our  modern  ideas  of  morality  are 
based.     Literature  and  life  are  inseparable  and 


96  Christianity  and  Education 

imply  each  other;  and  literature  in  its  greatest 
form,  is  saturated  with  Christian  truth.  It  is 
too  late  then  to  argue  the  broad  question  of  the 
Christian  character  of  all  higher  education. 
Christian  education  is  here;  it  has  been  tried 
and  has  stood  the  test  of  time ;  it  was  here  when 
you  and  I  came  into  the  world;  it  will  be  here 
when  we  have  turned  to  dust;  and  in  it  and 
with  it,  as  you  and  I  know  well,  are  bound  up 
the  hopes  for  the  generations  that  shall  follow 
us,  the  confidence  that  we  feel  in  the  perman- 
ence of  the  institutions  we  have  loved,  and  the 
ideals  we  have  cherished. 

But  what  about  the  Church  and  education? 
In  a  time  when  the  fundamental  Christian 
thought  has  triumphed  may  we  not  do  without 
the  Church,  which  in  the  public  mind  is  asso- 
ciated, not  with  these  great  broad  principles 
that  we  admit,  but  with  technical  dogmas,  that 
bristle,  as  it  were,  until  we  cannot  see  the  wood 
for  the  trees?  In  other  words,  may  we  not 
say  plainly  that  the  Church  has  saved  and 
handed  on,  by  toil  and  sacrifices,  for  eighteen 
hundred  years,  these  great  and  splendid  truths, 
and  now,  at  last,  has  forfeited  the  right  to  call 
them  in  any  sense  her  own. 

Well,  I  grant  the  misery  and  perversity  of 
that  passion  for  doctrinal  definition,  which  be- 
gan with  Rome  in  the  year  12 15  and  climaxed 
in  Calvin  in  the  year  1560,  which  has  split 
Christendom  into  sects  and  diverted  the  atten- 
tion of  men  from  the  essential  truth  and  fixed 


Christianity  and  Education  97 

it  upon  cant  phrases  and  shibboleths.  Yet  I  am 
not  here  to  fault  or  criticize  my  Christian 
brethren  of  other  names.  As  dear  old  Bram- 
hall  said,  "It  is  charity  to  think  well  of  our 
neighbors  and  good  divinity  to  look  well  to 
ourselves."  And  we  who  still  love  and  cherish 
the  traditions  and  institutions  of  the  old  Church 
of  the  Elnglish-speaking-  people  have  a  past 
history  *'of  Church  and  education,"  which 
ought  to  be  a  promise  and  inspiration  for  the 
future.  From  the  day  that  Alcuin,  a  Saxon 
Englishman,  built  up  the  Christian  schools  of 
Charlemagne,  and  thereby  founded  the  Uni- 
versity system  of  Europe,  to  the  day  when 
Arnold  at  Rugby  declared  that  education  meant 
morality  and  morality  meant  religion;  and  by 
his  unequalled  success  as  a  teacher,  created  an 
epoch  in  the  history  of  modern  education — 
from  first  to  last,  from  the  middle  ages  to  our 
own  time,  the  Church  of  the  Anglo-Saxons 
has  been  a  teaching  Church.  The  simplicity  of 
her  baptismal  creed,  the  sober  dignity  of  her 
worship,  her  quiet  reverence  and  her  free 
spirit,  have  ever  been  friends  of  learning. 
This  was  the  inspiration  of  the  noble-minded 
man  upon  whose  foundation  this  lecture  is 
delivered.  This  is  the  strong  compulsion  that 
brings  me  here  from  Tennessee  to  speak  on  this 
great  theme.  This,  also,  my  brethren,  is  the 
appeal  and  challenge  to  those  of  you,  who  are 
Christian  men,  in  this  great  University.  Be 
not  afraid  or  ashamed  of  the  history  of  the 


9^  Christianity  and  Bdncation 

Church  of  Jesus  Christ.  Whatever  the  cynics 
and  enemies  may  allege  of  mistakes  made  and 
wrongs  done  in  times  past  by  Christians  who 
were  averse  to  progress,  the  fact,  the  tre- 
mendous fact  remains,  that  the  faith,  the 
sacrifice,  aye!  the  blood  and  suffering  of  the 
Christian  Church,  were  the  price  that  was  paid 
for  the  breadth  and  freedom  of  modern  schol- 
arship. And  you  Christians  have_your  special 
opportunity  and  obligation  of  service  in  a  great 
centre  of  learning  like  this.  Pray  God  that 
you  may  meet  it,  in  thought  and  word  and  act, 
with  the  courage  and  fidelity  you  owe  to 
Christ ;  for  it  is  in  your  power  largely  to  see  that 
the  tone  and  atmosphere  of  this  place  is  the  tone 
and  atmosphere  of  a  Christian  University;  a 
University  where  true  liberty  and  true  religion 
may  go  hand  in  hand;  where  scholarship  may 
be  broad  and  free,  untrammelled  by  the  denial 
of  man's  high  destiny  in  Christ;  where 
Christianity  and  Science  may  flourish  to- 
gether, unfettered  by  servile  views  of  God  and 
human  nature  —  and  yet  illuminated  and 
strengthened  by  the  truth  that  justifies  itself 
through  life;  a  University,  finally,  where  virtue 
shall  enrich  Faith,  and  knowledge  shall  learn 
self-control;  where  refinement  and  gentleness 
and  courtesy — the  appreciation  of  beauty  in  art 
and  literature  and  manners — shall  be  the  ma- 
ture fruit  of  patience  and  Charity  and  brotherly 
kindness,  in  the  atmosphere  and  rule  of  love 
to  God  and  man. 


Christianity  and  Education  99 

My  Brethren,  this  is  an  ideal  worth  living 
for.  To  have  it  take  hold  of  one  man's  mind, 
to  inspire  and  strengthen  him,  would  com- 
pensate for  the  labor  and  time  involved  in  a 
whole  course  of  lectures  like  this.  For  any 
of  you  to  be  able  to  feel,  when  Commencement 
Day  comes,  that  you  have  contributed  some- 
thing to  the  realization  of  such  an  ideal  in  this 
University,  will  be  your  best  reward  then,  and 
the  promise  and  prophecy  of  your  joy  and 
peace  forever. 


The  Realizing  of  God. 


"Whither  shall  I  go  from  Thy  spirit  ?  or  whither  shall 
I  flee  from  Thy  presence?" — Psai^m  cxxxix.  :7. 

"In  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." — 
Acts  xvii.  :28. 


Religion  has  had  many  definitions,  but  the 
realization  of  religion  is  deeper  and  more  per- 
suasive than  any  of  its  definitions.  The  point 
of  view  from  which  I  would  address  you  to- 
night regards  religion  not  as  a  philosophy  but 
as  a  relationship.  Though  the  explanation  of 
religion  may  and  commonly  does  take  the  form 
of  philosophy,  yet  the  realization  oi  religion 
is  by  a  process  more  vital  than  any  mode  of 
thought.  Religion  has  to  do  with  the  relation- 
ship between  personal  beings  and  a  Supreme 
Personal  Being.  If  there  is  no  God  religion  is 
without  legitimate  paternity — it  is  but  an  un- 
related thing  of  time — at  best  an  utilitarian 
morality.  If  God  is  not  a  personal  Being,  in- 
telligent, just,  loving,  helpful,  seeking  and  satis- 
fying a  relationship  between  Himself  and  men, 
it  is  needless  for  us  to  take  interest  in  religious 
questions.  If  you  and  I  were  forms  of  matter 
only,  as  the  materialist  would  have  us  believe,  we 
should  bear  simply  a  necessary  relationship  to 
Nature  and  its  operations.   But  as  living  person- 


I02  The  Realizing  of  God 

alities,  our  real  relationship  is  in  and  with  that 
Supreme  Person  of  whom  Nature  is  a  manifes- 
tation. The  necessities  of  our  personality  keeps 
demanding-,  Is  God  my  Creator?  Is  the  Life 
in  me  from  His  life?  Is  the  limited  intelli- 
gence I  have  a  true  reflection,  according  to  my 
capacity,  of  His  intelligence?  Is  the  good  I 
would  do  of  the  same  essential  quality  as  His 
goodness  ?  When  I  do  wrong  and  cannot  repair 
it,  may  I  rely  yet  on  His  sympathy?  When  I 
strive  to  resist  evil  are  there  forces  within  and 
around  me  girding  my  moral  being  for  the 
victory?  When  the  world's  seductions  steal 
away  my  senses  may  I  yet  recover  the  loss  by 
invoking  against  the  movements  of  my  flesh 
an  undercurrent  of  spiritual  energy  derived 
from  and  reinforced  by  the  divine  Spirit? 
When  my  body  dies  is  there  still  for  me  a 
recognition  and  a  welcome  from  Him  whom 
I  have  sought  to  know  and  serve  throughout 
the  course  of  my  earthly  existence? 

Such  questions  concerning  God  and  man's 
relationship  to  Him,  are  as  old  and  as  new  as 
human  experience;  and  never  more  vital  or 
hopeful  than  to-day.  The  answer  to  such  ques- 
tions is  to  be  sought  in  the  continually  unfold- 
ing experience  of  mankind,  and  for  us  to-day, 
heirs  of  the  thought  and  life  of  the  ages,  the 
answer  must  still  be  made  in  the  accumulated 
light  of  the  age  in  which  we  live.  We  are 
living  in  a  world  of  thought  which  has  put  on 
the  trim  habit  of  science,  in  a  world  which  tests 


The  Realising  of  God  ^^3 

every  theory,  opinion,  desire  or  hope  of  man 
by  the  process  of  experiment.  Philosophy  has 
come  down  from  the  clouds  to  build  up  in 
human  consciousness  the  consistent  relation  be- 
tween Experience  and  Cause.  In  ethics  men 
are  busy  with  what  is  in  test  of  what  ou^ht  to 
be.  In  psychology  they  begin  the  study  of  the 
human  soul  by  inspecting  the  movements  of 
the  muscles  of  a  frog's  leg.  Science  is  investi- 
gating all  things  visible  and  invisible,  material 
and  spiritual,  by  one  and  the  same  procedure. 
It  sweeps  the  heavens  with  its  telescope  to  learn 
the  movements  of  the  stars,  and,  if  so  be,  tid- 
ings of  God;  it  dissects  the  human  body  in 
search  ior  apt  cures  of  disease,  and  it  would 
put  itself  in  physical  touch  with  spirits  departed 
from  their  bodies  in  order  to  demonstrate  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  In  religion,  the  centre 
of  authority,  having  passed  from  the  Church  to 
the  Bible,  and  again  from  the  Bible  to  reason, 
seems  to-day  triumphantly  pressing  reason  to 
submit  itself  to  the  primary  power  of  faith  and 
the  moral  intuitions.  We  are  then  clearly  in 
an  age  of  thought  wherein  religion,  like  every- 
thing else  that  concerns  human  life,  demands 
scientific  verification.  I  am  speaking  this 
evening  to  some  whose  training  in  a  great  mod- 
ern University  forbids  them  from  treating  at 
all  with  religion  except  in  terms  of  life's  ex- 
perience. The  thoughtful  young  man  who 
looks  below  the  material  surface  of  things  to 
discover  the  substance,  the  cohesion,  the  motive 


I04  The  Realizing  of  God 

and  the  purpose  of  his  life,  does  not,  cannot, 
ought  not  to  view  religion  or  approach  its 
problems  as  his  grandfather  or  even  his  father 
did.  For  religion,  as  I  said  at  the  beginning, 
is  a  relationship,  and  if  it  means  anything  at 
all,  it  means  everything  to  him  as  an  individual 
capable  of  being  brought  into  such  relationship. 
It  must  grip  his  own  thought,  searching  his 
own  nature  through  and  through,  set  free  his 
own  life's  forces  to  claim  his  privileges  and  to 
fulfill  his  duties  as  a  living  son  of  an  ever- 
living  God. 

In  view  of  this  modern  demand  upon  re- 
ligious thought,  and  in  harmony,  I  trust,  with 
the  present  purpose  of  the  Baldwin  lectureship, 
I  ask  you  to  consider  afresh  that  primal  idea 
and  fact  of  Religion,  namely,  God,  and  your 
own  realizable  relationship  to  Him.  And  for 
this  I  shall  speak  more  as  a  preacher  than  a 
philosophic  lecturer. 

You  and  I  commonly  take  God  too  much  as 
a  traditionally  granted  assumption,  without  put- 
ting ourselves  in  living  thought  relations  with 
Him.  In  the  background  of  consciousness  we 
let  Him  float  vaguely  while  the  more  obvious 
affairs  of  intellect  or  life  claim  our  interest,  un- 
til suddenly  from  some  sharp  discipline  we 
awake  to  the  fact  that  we  have  been  living  prac- 
tically without  God  in  our  world.  Seemingly 
He  has  withdrawn  from  us  or  we  have 
dropped  away  from  Him — which  comes  to  the 
same    thing.     We    perhaps  would  justify  our 


The  Realizing  of  God  105 

disregard  of  Him  on  the  ground  that  the  idea 
of  God,  though  the  most  sublime  and  the  most 
necessary,  is  intellectually  the  most  elusive 
conception  with  which  the  human  mind  can 
have  to  do.  But  at  once  the  answer  comes 
from  history  that  men,  whether  with  or  against 
their  intellects,  have  ever  clung  to  the  idea  of 
God.  Since  the  world  began  He  has  been  the 
fear  and  hope  of  the  sinner,  the  aspiration  and 
joy  of  the  saint,  the  confidence  of  the  prophet, 
the  muse  of  the  poet,  the  truth  of  the  philoso- 
pher. In  all  ages,  human  thought  or  fear  or 
hope  has  had  some  conception  of  His  charac- 
ter or  power  expressed  in  various  symbols, 
incantation  and  formulas,  witnessing  to  the  fact 
that  deep  in  the  consciousness  of  humanity 
there  is  one  essential  permanent  idea,  ever  seek- 
ing to  make  itself  real — God,  an  idea  so  vast 
as  to  comprehend  all  possible  thought  of  Him, 
yet  so  near  and  so  adaptable  to  man's  ex- 
perience that  every  soul  of  whatever  condition 
has  a  necessary  relation  to  Him,  and  under  the 
right  conditions  may  become  conscious  of  that 
relationship.  The  child,  looking  up  into  the 
overarching  vault,  sees  the  stars  as  "God's 
eyes"  smiling  through  the  darkness  at  him ;  the 
savage  marks  the  lightning  as  the  flash  of  God's 
anger,  the  pestilence  as  the  blast  of  his  hot  dis- 
pleasure, and  the  night  wind  through  the  pines 
as  his  whisper  of  warning.  To  the  philosopher 
God  is  the  Infinite  Mind,  or  the  Absolute;  to 
the  Scientist,  He  is  the  Supreme  Force,  or  the 


io6  The  Realizing  of  God 

Ultimate  Reality;  to  the  moralist,  He  is  the 
Power  in  man's  conscience  that  makes  for 
righteousness;  to  the  materialist  God  is  eter- 
nally Orphaned  Nature;  to  the  secularist  He  is 
Collective  Humanity,  while  g-enerally  men  can- 
not experience  a  profound  emotion  without 
seeming  to  realize  the  nearer  Presence  of  the 
Supreme  Power  to  whom  their  joy  may  ren- 
der praise  and  their  pain  fly  for  relief. 

God  is  the  universal  Idea,  the  underlying 
*•*  and  interpenetrating  Reality;  nevertheless  man 

has  ever  found  Him  indefinable  and  elusive. 
"Canst  thou  by  searching-  find  out  God? 
Canst  thou  find  out  the  Almighty  to  perfection  ? 
It  is  high  as  heaven.  What  canst  thou  do? 
Deeper  than  the  depth,  what  canst  thou 
know?"  exclaims  an  early  poet-philosopher, 
blinded  by  human  suffering  which  he  cannot 
but  perceive  comes  with  the  knowledge  and  per- 
mission of  God. 

"No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time"  is  the 
conviction  even  of  the  Christian  evangelist,  not- 
withstanding he  believed  in  and  served  God  as 
revealed  by  Jesus  Christ.  "O,  the  depth  of  the 
riches,  both  of  the  wisdom  and  knowledge  of 
God;  how  unsearchable  are  his  judgments  and 
his  ways  past  finding  out,"  is  the  adoring  ut- 
terance of  the  Christian  apostle  while  still 
treading  the  way  which  Christ  had  opened  to 
him  as  leading  to  the  Father.  Clearly  our 
original  Christianity,  with  all  its  wisdom  and 
power  from  God  in  the  person  of  Jesus,  left 


The  Realizing  of  God  io7 

much  hidden  mystery  within  the  Bein^  of  God 
and  much  of  our  conscious  relations  to  Him  to 
be  worked  out  through  the  developing  ex- 
perience of  humanity.  Later  the  doo:matic 
scholars  of  the  fourth  and  fifth  ecclesiastical 
Councils  confidently  claimed  to  encompass  and 
define  God  in  their  formulated  Creeds,  but  He 
would  not  be  confined  within  them;  for,  break- 
ing through  He  still  submitted  Himself  to 
manifold  heresies  and  mysticisms  by  which 
minds  eag"er,  curious,  passionate,  tried  still  to 
elucidate  or  realize  Him.  In  the  Middle  Ages 
God  was  conspicuously  elevated  upon  the 
Throne  of  Majesty,  the  avenue  to  which  was 
lined  by  innumerable  intermediaries,  and  from 
which  diverged  two  ways,  one  for  the  faithful 
Churchmen  into  the  golden  fields  of  paradise, 
the  other  for  the  impenitent  sinner  into  the  pit 
of  endless  despair.  In  the  eighteenth  century 
God  was  conceived  to  be  the  original  Architect 
of  the  universe,  who,  from  the  beginning  hav- 
ing completed  His  work,  left  it  to  its  own 
natural  devices,  save  for  His  occasional  inter- 
positions by  way  of  special  providences.  In  the 
nineteenth  century  men  in  pursuit  of  scientific 
verification  divested  God  of  His  personality 
and  devised  for  His  name  the  algebraic  symbol 
X — -The  Unknown ;  while  still  among  emotional 
Christian  revivalists  He  is  vividly  expressed  in 
terms  which  confuse  His  attributes  with  those 
of  an  implacable  devil. 


io8  The  Realizing  of  God 

Varyinj»-  conceptions  of  God!  What  are 
they  but  human  si^ns  of  His  indefinableness  ? 
Or  manifold  voices  of  men  crying  out  in  the 
darkness  after  God,  some  faintly,  others  pas- 
sionately, some  with  no  constraint  of  reason  or 
humility,  others  with  the  pretentious  pride  of 
intellect,  each  reflecting-  some  fragment  or 
fringe,  yet  all  alike  falling  short,  of  the  im- 
mensity and  manifoldness  of  the  Eternal 
Reality  called  God. 

There  is  one  conception  of  GKDd  which  dur- 
ing the  closing  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
has  been  recovered,  and  illumiated  by  eminent 
theologians,  philosophers,  scientists  and  poets, 
which  must  be,  I  think,  the  greatest  possible 
help  to  those  who  would  serve  God  with  heart 
and  will  as  well  as  with  the  understanding. 
You  are  undoubtedly  familiar  with  what  is 
commonly  called  the  Immanence  of  God,  or 
the  universal  indwelling  of  the  Divine  Presence 
and  Power  in  nature  through  its  laws  and  in 
man  through  all  his  experiences.  If  you  were 
disposed  to  study  this  recovered  conception  you 
may  do  so  at  some  length  in  Prof.  A.  V.  Allen's 
excellent  history,  "The  Continuity  of  Christian 
Thought,"  or  more  briefly  in  the  admirable 
menographs  of  John  Fiske,  "The  Idea  of  God," 
and  "Through  Nature  to  God,"  wherein  the 
contrasted  and  intermerging  truths  of  God  as 
transcendent  and  God  as  immanent  are  brought 
out  with  exceeding  skill  and  graphicness. 
Should  you  wish  to  trace  it  back  to  its  source 


The  Realizing  of  God  ^^9 

in  philosophy,  you  will  study  the  ^reat  Jewish 
thinker,  Spinoza,  out  of  whose  profound  but 
questionable  pantheism  you  may  extract  some 
essential  elements  in  the  modern  thought  of 
God.  If  Spinoza  may  prove  too  elaborate  or 
confusing,  read  Emerson's  two  essays,  "Na- 
ture" and  "The  Oversoul."  If  you  would  find 
the  subject  gathered  up,  variously  illustrated 
and  driven  home,  you  cannot  do  better  than 
read  a  comparatively  late  book  by  Dr.  Gordon 
— "A  New  Epoch  of  Faith."  If  you  would 
turn  to  poetry,  and  you  should  cultivate  the 
best  poetry  if  you  would  sound  the  deepest 
depths  and  freest  flight  of  man's  touch  with 
God,  you  will  find  wisdom  and  beauty  concern- 
ing the  divine  immanence  in  Wordsworth, 
Tennyson  and  Browning;  also  much  along  this 
line  suggestive  and  helpful  in  a  lately  published 
book  of  Bishop  Carpenter's,  "The  Religious 
Spirit  in  the  Poets." 

What  do  these  thinkers  mean  by  the  Im- 
manence of  God?  They  mean  what  the  He- 
brew patriarch  meant  when  he  said : 

"Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  spirit,  or  whither  shall 
I  go  from  thy  presence?  If  I  climb  up  into  heaven, 
Thou  art  there.  If  I  go  down  to  Sheol,  Thou  art  there 
also.  If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning  and  remain  in 
the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea,  even  there  shall  Thy 
hand  lead  me  and  Thy  right  hand  shall  hold  me." 

They  mean  what  the  Lord  Christ  meant  when 
He  said : 


no  The  Realising  of  God 

"God  is  Spirit;"  "My  Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I 
work;"  "He  maketh  his  sun  to  rise  on  the  evil  and  on 
the  good." 

They  mean  what  St.  Paul  meant,  when  he 
wrote : 

"In  Him  we  live  and  move  and  have  our  being." 

They  mean  what  Wordsworth  meant  when 
he  spoke  of  what  he  inwardly  felt — 

"The   sense  sublime 
"Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused." 

They  mean  what  Herbert  Spencer  had  in  mind 
when  tracing  natural  phenomena  back  to  their 
ultimate  source  he  declared  the  "Presence  of  an 
infinite  and  eternal  energ-y  from  which  all  things 
proceed." 

They  mean  what  Tennyson  meant  as  he 
sang: 

"Speak  to  Him  then,  for  He  hears,  and  spirit  with  spirit 

can  meet, 
Closer  is   He   than   breathing,   and  nearer   than   hands 

and  feet." 

And  again : 

*'Only  that  which  made  us  meant  us  to  be  mightier  by 

and  by, 
Set  the  sphere  of  all  the  boundless  heaven  within  the 

human  eye. 
Set  the  shadow  of  Himself,  the  boundless,  through  the 

human  soul, 
Boundless   inward   in  the  atom,  boundless  outward  in 

the  whole." 


The  Realizing^  of  God 


III 


They  mean  what  John  Fiske  meant  as,  draw- 
ing from  the  teachings  of  the  great  Greek 
Church  Fathers,  Clement,  O'rigen  and  Athana- 
sius,  he  wrote :  "They  regarded  deity  as  imma- 
nent in  the  universe,  and  eternally  operating 
through  natural  laws.  In  their  view  God  is  not 
a  localized  personality,  remote  from  the  world 
and  acting  upon  it  only  by  means  of  occasional 
portent  and  prodigy !  Nor  is  the  world  a  lifeless 
machine,  blindly  working  after  some  preordained 
method  and  only  feeling  the  presence  of  God  in 
so  far  as  he  now  and  then  sees  fit  to  interfere 
with  its  normal  course  of  procedure.  O'n  the 
contrary,  God  is  the  ever  present  life  of  the 
world;  it  is  through  Him  that  all  things  exist 
from  moment  to  moment,  and  the  natural  se- 
quence of  events  is  a  perpetual  revelation  of  the 
divine  wisdom  and  goodness."* 

I  have  called  this  doctrine  of  the  Immanence 
of  God  a  recovered  doctrine.  It  is  not  new  but 
old,  as  we  might  know  by  the  quotations  from 
the  Hebrew  psalmist  and  St.  Paul,  and  from  the 
references  to  the  early  Fathers  of  the  Greek 
Church.  It  is  the  profound  conception  that  all 
men  have  had  and  must  have  who  really  feel  God 
in  their  inner  life,  and  reflect  up  His  necessary 
relation  to  the  universe  and  the  onward  course  of 
human  society.  Hebrews,  Christians,  ancient 
and  modern,  have  held  this  conception' of  deity 
more  or  less  clearly,  and  it  was  fundamentally 
involved  in  the  Church's  doctrine  of  the  Holy 
Spirit ;  but  it  was  largely  lost  or  overcome  under 

"The  Idea  of  God,"  pp.   82,  83. 


112  The  Realizing^  of  God 

the  formal  teaching  of  the  Latin  Fathers,  the 
crass  externaHsm  of  the  middle  ages,  and  the 
mechanical  rationalism  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. The  philosophers,  theistic  scientists, 
poets  and  theologians  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
informed,  as  we  may  believe,  by  the  Spirit  of 
Truth,  have  recovered  the  lost  doctrine  and  pro- 
foundly quickened  our  religious  faith,  hope  and 
service  by  this  truly  scientific  conception  of  God 
and  of  man's  ethically  realizable  relation  to 
Him. 

The  doctrine  is  no  device  for  defining  the  In- 
finite being  of  God.  It  cannot  pretend  any  more 
than  other  doctrines  to  comprehend  Him,  as 
though  God,  the  infinite  Life,  could  be  encom- 
passed by  verbal  formulas.  But  the  doctrine 
does  serve  to  set  free  within  our  minds  an  ani- 
mating view-point  from  which  to  overcome  the 
hard  mechanical  notions  respecting  Him  and 
His  work  in  nature,  in  history  and  in  the  per- 
sonal lives  of  men.  It  serves  to  take  God  out 
of  that  enforced  remoteness  to  which  a  formal- 
ized theology  had  driven  Him  and  even  out  of 
that  inaccessible  nescience  to  which  a  material- 
ized science  would  consign  him. 

It  brings  Him  into  our  practical  thought,  it 
connects  Him  with  our  common  life  and  experi- 
ence. It  does  away  with  the  sharp  distinction  be- 
tween nature  and  the  supernatural,  as  it  com- 
prehends all  things  visible  and  invisible  within 
the  underlving  unity  of  His  life  and  will.  It 
sweeps  away  all  so-called  miracles  by  giving  us 
to  see  Him  working  in  every  simplest  movement 


The  Realmn^  of  God  1 13 

of  our  common  life,  and  explaining  the  seem- 
ingly miraculous  by  referring  us  to  a  deeper  un- 
derstanding of  His  works. 

Moreover,  the  idea  of  God's  immanence  deep- 
ens and  expands  our  view  of  divine  inspiration 
as  something  working  with  no  less  reality,  power 
and  fruitfulness  than  in  the  olden  times.  God 
spoke  from  Mt.  Sinai,  but  He  did  not  then  cease 
to  speak.  He  spoke  through  Christ  on  the 
Mount  of  Beatitude  and  on  Calvary  most  pro- 
foundly and  winningly,  but  He  did  not  then 
cease  to  speak,  for  He  speaks  to-day  in  every  dis- 
covery of  science,  through  every  just  and  equal 
law  established  in  our  courts,  in  every  work  of 
art  that  educates  a  genuine  love  of  the  beautiful, 
by  all  the  deeds  of  brave  men  and  patient  women 
and  through  the  appeals  of  innocent,  trustful 
children  or  of  any  suffering  cause  of  humanity. 

God,  we  say,  inspired  the  Bible  in  varying 
degrees,  as  holy  men  of  old,  moved  by  the  Holy 
Spirit,  spake  in  promise,  in  rebuke,  in  warning; 
yet,  not  less  really  and  sometimes  now  with 
even  greater  practical  effect  God  inspires  truly 
gifted  writers  of  modern  books  which  in  the  lan- 
guage of  our  times  and  with  regard  to  our 
present-day  experiences  and  needs  help  us  to 
serious  thinking,  pure  feeling  and  heroic  moral 
action. 

In  a  word,  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  imma- 
nence deepens  and  quickens  and  enlarges  within 
us  the  convicting,  consoling,  uplifting  sense  of  an 
everliving  God  who  is  in  the  world  now  as  ever, 


114  The  Realizing  of  God 

and  more  fully  now  than  ever  because  of  man's 
larger  knowledge  and  wider  experience.  All 
times  have  been  and  are  in  His  hand,  and  the 
everlasting  arms  of  His  purpose  have  never  been 
withdrawn  from  the  universe  or  the  life  of  man. 
He  is  ever  with  His  world,  because  the  world  is 
His,  every  part  and  parcel.  Snow-clad  moun- 
tain and  fertile  valley,  grassy  plain  and  arid 
desert,  gentle  brook  and  heaving  ocean, 
golden  sunshine  and  dreadful  thunderbolt, 
peaceful  village  and  bursting  volcano,  flower 
and  weed,  blossom  and  mildew,  plenty 
and  famine,  medicine  and  poison,  fine  gold  and 
common  clay — all  are  Thine,  O  Lord,  for  Thou 
hast  created  all  things ;  for  Thy  pleasure  and  for 
Thy  purpose  they  existed  and  were  created ;  and 
all  lower  things  that  in  Thee  and  through  Thee 
they  may  become  higher  or  reveal  Thee  in  ever 
higher  or  closer  relationship. 

And  God  is  with  us  men  of  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury, with  us  as  He  was  ever  of  old,  though 
everywhere  about  our  strangely  developing  civ- 
ilization He  makes  deeper  and  finer  marks  of 
His  presence.  He  is  with  us  in  all  things, 
whether  positive  good  or  seeming  evil,  in  sin 
and  in  repentance,  in  the  insight  of  the  stimu- 
lated conscience,  in  the  sob  of  the  contrite  heart, 
in  the  fear  of  the  coward  spirit,  in  the  inter- 
mingling pain  and  joy  of  the  crucified  flesh.  He 
is  with  us  in  the  orderly  worship  of  the  glorious 
cathedral,  in  the  unassuming  piety  of  the  little 
meeting-house,  and  in  the  revival  of  men's  bodies 


The  Realizing  of  God  "5 

and  brains,  amid  the  primal  vitalities  of  the 
meadows,  the  mountains  and  the  ocean.  He 
dwells  in  the  mansions  of  the  rich  and  in  the 
cottages  of  the  poor,  and  in  the  hovels  of  the 
outcasts.  He  educates  in  our  universities,  in  our 
schools  and  in  the  experiences  of  daily  life.  He 
legislates  in  our  congress.  He  goes  forth  in  our 
wars,  He  visits  our  jails,  our  hospitals,  and  our 
places  of  amusement.  He  weeps  with  us,  laughs 
with  us,  prays  with  us,  dies  with  us  and  rises  to 
life  with  us.  If  in  veiled  presence  He  was  in  the 
atrocities  of  the  massacre  at  Kishineff.  He  is  at 
once  unveiled  in  the  moral  indignation  and 
charity  of  Christendom  which  rebukes  and  re- 
pairs that  unspeakable  outrage. 

Whither  shall  you  and  I,  then,  go  from  His 
Spirit  or  whither  shall  we  go  from  his  presence? 
Nowhere.  He  is  everywhere  around  and  in  us. 
His  life  pulses  in  our  veins.  His  thoughts  are  in 
our  thoughts;  by  His  laws  we  are  girt  about 
through  every  throb  of  our  hearts,  every  stir  of 
conscience,  every  motion  of  will,  every  deed  done 
or  left  undone,  in  every  death  we  lament,  and 
in  every  life  we  cherish.  We  are  personal  beings 
because  He  is  a  personal  being;  we  are  ethical 
beings  because  He  is  ethical.  We  are  His  chil- 
dren because  He  is  our  Father  who  has  mind, 
desire,  law  and  discipline  for  our  highest  good. 

Since  this  is  so  what  is  our  part  to  perform? 
It  is  to  make  a  permanent  decision  for  God,  the 
personal  Divine  Life,  as  against  the  material 
world  which  God  alone  can  use  and  administer 


ii6  The  Realizing  of  God 

to  our  higher  life ;  it  is,  by  the  very  power  with 
which  He  has  endowed  us,  to  decide  for  Him  as 
against  a  loveless  universe  and  a  disintegrating 
nature. 

What  is  the  straight  course  for  our  feet? 
There  it  lies,  beginning  at  our  inner  moral  sense 
and  stretching  indefinitely  on  through  light  and 
shade,  through  good  and  evil,  to  the  recognition 
and  realization  of  Nature's  God.  Along  every 
step  of  this  way,  the  God  within  us  bids  us  to 
reverence  every  revelation  and  to  obey  every  law 
which  He  has  made  and  continues  to  make  for 
our  growth  in  wisdom  and  the  permanent  secur- 
ity of  our  life  force.  Along  every  step  of  the 
way  our  evident  duty  is  to  refuse  the  evil  and 
choose  the  good,  for  God  is  in  the  evil  to  teach 
us  to  shun  and  renounce  it,  as  He  is  in  the 
good  to  make  us  delight  in  it  more  and  more. 

Yes,  our  part  is  ever  more  to  cooperate  with 
God  in  adjusting  His  laws  within  us  to  what- 
ever other  laws  of  His,  wherever  and  however 
they  operate,  which  tend  to  keep  us  in  living  re- 
lations and  in  an  unbroken  unity  of  moral  pur- 
pose with  Him. 

Yet,  after  all  this  has  been  said  of  God's  Im- 
manence and  of  our  relationship  to  Him, 
wrought  out  into  realization  through  experience, 
there  surely  remains  a  definite  word  for  a  Chris- 
tian to  say  to  those  who,  like  my  hearers,  are 
heirs  of  the  Christian  faith  and  experience  of 
nineteen  hundred  years.  Jesus  Christ!  He 
lived.     He  still  lives.     His  experience  of  God, 


The  Realizing  of  God  1^7 

His  realization  of  God's  personal  character  and 
will  was  and  remains  an  ineradicable  fact  in  the 
life  of  humanity.  His  religion  of  the  Incarna- 
tion and  of  the  cross  and  of  the  riven  tomb, 
having  met  the  conflicts  of  nineteen  centuries,  has 
entered  this  twentieth  century  without  loss  of 
vital  substance  and  with  unimpaired  confidence. 
By  the  test  of  the  ages  that  religion  in  essential 
definition  has  proved  itself  to  be  no  transient 
phenomenon,  but  a  revelation  of  God's  eternal 
truth  set  within  historically  changing  forms. 

In  the  midst  of  the  titanic  material  aggressive- 
ness of  our  times,  men  still  look  with  assurance 
to  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  for  internal  power 
to  free  them  from  the  restrictions  of  their  ex- 
ternal environment.  To  Him  dwelling  by  faith 
and  service  within  their  consciences  men  still 
go  for  the  quickening  and  security  of  their  real- 
ization of  God's  paternity  and  of  their  own 
actual  or  possible  relationship  to  an  eternal  life. 

In  their  ethical  relations  and  efforts,  men  still 
justify  the  familiar  admonition  of  John  Stuart 
Mill :  "Live  so  that  Jesus  Christ  would  approve 
your  life." 

Such  a  religion  in  the  deepest  sense  of  the  term 
is  scientific.  It  was  verified  in  His  life.  It  veri- 
fies itself  still  in  those  who  know  and  serve  Him. 
Since  He  lived  that  religion  the  idea  of  God's 
immanence  has  been  no  theory  but  a  truth  of 
increasing  assurance  of  demonstration.  From 
his  life  in  God,  as  from  no  one  other  in  human 
flesh,  the  world  has  learned  to  think  with  rev- 


ii8  The  Realizing,  of  God 

erent  familiarity  of  God  as  the  Father.  In  his 
character  they  have  experienced  the  inspiring 
vitality  and  affection  of  the  Father's  will. 

Would  you  leave  Jesus  Christ  out  of  your 
confident  approach  to  God  ?  Nay,  to  leave  Him 
out  would  be  as  though  you  should  leave  out  the 
physical  sun  of  the  material  heaven  in  your  ef- 
fort to  get  light  and  heat  for  the  common  ac- 
tivities of  your  bodily  life. 

Hear  Him  say  :  "I  and  The  Father  are  one." 
"He  that  hath  seen  me,  hath  seen  The  Father." 
'* Whosoever  willeth  to  do  God's  will  shall  know 
the  doctrine  of  God." 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 

Renewed  books  are  subjert  to  immediate  recall. 


fitou^^ 


LD  21A-50to-4,'59 
(A1724sl0)476B 


General  Library     ^ 
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Berkeley 


YB  33796 


// 


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